


Would That I Were Golden Dust

by ThatOneGirlBehindYou



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arachnophobia, Blind Character, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Neglect, Coma, Consensual Daemon Touching, Daemon Separation, Depression, Fix-It, Harm to Children, Harm to Daemons, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Jonah Magnus' Harem Of Regency Simps, Manipulation, Memory Loss, Mentions of Cancer, Multi, Murder, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Queerplatonic Relationships, Simultaneous Archivists Sasha James and Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Martin Blackwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27734197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneGirlBehindYou/pseuds/ThatOneGirlBehindYou
Summary: The world is a lot more dangerous with your soul walking by your side, and Entities aren’t shy about feeding on golden Dust.[Daemon!au, fix-it, canon divergence]
Relationships: Adelard Dekker & Gertrude Robinson, Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Gerard Keay & Melanie King, Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 179
Kudos: 298
Collections: TMA Big Bang 2020





	1. Gerry

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Welcome to my TMA Big Bang entry!
> 
> To help with visualizing the daemons, you can find some edits (and the art for this fic) [at this Tumblr gallery ](https://daemonausideblog.tumblr.com/)
> 
> You can also find [a playlist for this fic here!](https://bisexualoftheblade.tumblr.com/post/636216689871273984/would-that-i-were-golden-dust-a-playlist-by)
> 
> Updates to this fic will be posted every Monday (unless I don't have time bc sadly I'm only human)
> 
> Amazing peeps who worked on this fic:
> 
>  **Artists:**  
> [literallyspace](https://literallyspace.tumblr.com/), [iamthehelperdog](https://iamthehelperdog.tumblr.com/), [desert-lily](https://desert-lily.tumblr.com/), [waspsnest](https://waspsnest.tumblr.com/) and [bisexualoftheblade](https://bisexualoftheblade.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  **Betas:**  
> [bisexualoftheblade](https://bisexualoftheblade.tumblr.com/), [eternallysadaboutjontim](https://eternallysadaboutjontim.tumblr.com/), [preciousthingsareprecious](https://preciousthingsareprecious.tumblr.com/) and [kingthephantom](https://kingthephantom.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Special mention to [dheiress](https://dheiress.tumblr.com/) and [mamaclownhunter](https://mamaclownhunter.tumblr.com/) who weren’t technically part of the bang but who were also essential to finishing this thing!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Abusive/neglectful parents  
> Non consensual daemon touching (not sexual in nature)  
> Mentions of cancer  
> Hospitals
> 
> See end notes for more information.

* * *

_His father's daemon is named Agape, and she's a black Belgian shepherd whose tail never stops wagging. She loves napping with his mother's daemon, and often bounces around him like a puppy, trying to get him to play with her._

_It rarely works, but the few times it does Callidus bats her around with his large paws and just the slightest suggestion of claws behind each strike, and she's elated for the rest of the day._

_It is Agape who names Gerry's daemon, and Eric who comes up with the nicknames only the two of them use._

_"Ridiculous, both of them," Mary says, rolling her eyes with a scowl. "Gerard is a respectable name, there's no reason to shorten it."_

_"What about Boni's?" Agape asks, her ears low against her skull and her tail curled between her legs._

_Mary's face softens the slightest bit; sometimes that happens when she looks at Eric's daemon, and he treasures the occasions, rare as they are. "Bonitatem is a decent name too, I suppose," she replies, and the tail wags again._

_Callidus rarely ever addresses Eric, for his part. He prefers to lurk along the corners of the room, staring at him with his stunning green eyes._

_"You look at me like I'm prey, Calli," Eric jokes once._

_"You are," Callidus replies, without missing a beat. "We caught you. Nothing else can touch you now."_

_And Eric thinks that at least in the world Mary opened his eyes to, this is nothing short of a declaration of love._

_That last evening, after dinner and tea, Callidus curls around Agape and grooms her to sleep. The dog daemon's tail wags softly even in her sleep, and Eric smiles weakly at the light thudding on the floor._

_"It's been a rough few months," he says, already giving in to the drowsiness coming through his bond with Agape. "It'll get better, I promise." He can't see her holding the garden shears, or Callidus' jaws preparing to close around Agape's neck._

_"It will," Mary responds._

* * *

"Do you remember them?" Gerry asks in the safety of their little cave made of blankets and pillows. Mum left on an errand for a while, and they took the opportunity to turn their bed into a fort. Boni (Mum _hates_ it when they don't use each other's full names, but Gerry finds that he likes their nicknames a lot more, even if they only get to use them when they're alone) even turned into a bird to get some snacks from the higher shelves, since the food on the fridge ran out last morning.

"Not really." Boni sighs, turning into a large dog, which for some reason is the form they end up regressing into when they need comfort. "But sometimes I think I dream about them."

"...Yeah. Yeah, me too."

* * *

_Soon enough they have more important things to focus on than the fading memory of the man that left them alone with mother._

_Gerry learns his letters from old leather bound tomes that speak of monsters and fears; his mother makes him recite the list of fourteen every night before bed, and failure to remember one results in a very detailed bedtime story featuring the forgotten party._

_Those are the tame punishments, the ones she gives when she's feeling gentle._

_When Gerry runs her patience thin, when he accidentally makes a tear on a page, or interrupts her when she's deep in conversation with her associates -the kind of beings that look at Gerry like he's a snack, and only stop when Callidus rumbles a low warning growl in his throat- she's a lot more severe._

_He learns to fear the outstretched hand more than the entities she tells him about, because the hand won't retreat, won't give up until Gerry digs his daemon -Boni tends to take the smallest forms she can in those occasions, changing rapidly as she tries to hide in his clothes- out and places her on it._

* * *

"It was nothing too terrible," he says many years later, as he recounts the story at a dingy diner on the side of the road. "Just a twist to her ears, or a pull at her tail. I always did feel bad about handing Boni over but she didn't really give us another choice."

Gertrude's face across the table is impassive as always, but he can tell Dekker is horrified by the indignant poof of his daemon's feathers. Boni's hackles raise to show her fangs before she growls, as she does whenever they feel nervous.

Gerry averts his gaze, and signals the server for another beer before changing the topic.

* * *

_Boni settles when they're around twelve years old._

_Gerry's heart stops for a second before he realizes -the wave of relief that washes over him is destabilizing- that she's not a panther like he thought at first glance._

_Only when she gives him a shy wag of her tail and a weak, pitiful whine does Gerry go and wrap his arms around her. Of course this is his Boni, silly and gentle and sweet._

_Still, the all-black pitbull looks menacing and dangerous, and mother nods approvingly when he brings the matter to her attention._

_"It's a good form, Bonitatem," she says without lifting her gaze from the elaborate runes she's drawing._

_"It's a relief to see you're finally starting to live up to your legacy," her daemon adds with something that sounds like pride. It's something Gerry isn't used to, especially coming directly from his mother's soul._

_"I- thank you, Calli."_

_It's the first and last time he uses the nickname._

_Whenever anyone asks what the four long scars on his forearm are, he just tells them he got into a fight with a feral cat, which is not too far from the truth anyways._

* * *

"Where did you get that bone?" he asks as they go back to their motel room. Gerry wants nothing more than to take a hot shower and rinse off the remains of the Flesh avatar they just killed. 

Wait.

"Boni, _where the fuc_ k did you get that bone?" he goes to grab at her, but she's already trying to squeeze under the bed like she's a Chihuahua instead of 80 pounds of muscle. "Don't make me lift the bed-"

"Ecdurus gave it to me!" she whines. "He said Gertrude got it from the kitchen."

"You don't even need to eat!"

"...Chewing it is fun."

Gerry groans, rolling his eyes fondly at the three quarters of her still protruding from under the bed. "Don't make a mess. I'll go take a shower."

Gertrude and Ecdurus are... they're different. 

A lot of the rules that applied to Mum also apply to them, but not all, and Gerry finds that he's even more confused by those grey spaces that are neither forbidden nor allowed. 

She doesn't say anything when he thanks her for the bone the next morning, but out the corner of his eye he sees her enormous cat daemon swatting at Boni's nose, and through their bond it feels like being slapped on the face with a woolen mitten; a bit perplexing, but not bad. 

* * *

_He's not blind enough to not notice she's using him, that her 'affection' is entirely dependent on his utility, on the slightest hint of power that the Eye has insinuated upon him, because she refuses her own._

_It's not terribly different to how he felt with his mother, aside from knowing that this time he's at least being used to save people from terrible fates._

_Still, it almost feels at times like what Gerry imagines a normal life to be._

_Gertrude tells him to quit it with the smoking and to sit up straight, wishes him good night before they go to their respective cheap hotel rooms, and curtly points out the breakfast options she knows he'll like in the morning._

_Her Ecdurus' staring used to make him uncomfortable at first -feline daemons have that effect on him-, but sometimes when their gazes meet, he closes his eyes slowly in a long, drawn-out blink, and Gerry finds that he's forcing a smile back._

_Maybe Gertrude is using him, but it doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't care for him, he thinks._

_He hopes._

* * *

Gerry wakes up at the hospital, with Boni's heavy head laid down on his chest.

"...Hey there," he greets. His voice sounds -and feels- like someone made him swallow a cheese grater, and his hand spasms a little before he's able to bring it to rest between Boni's ears. "I'm... I'm guessing it wasn't just a migraine after all, huh?"

"They left." Boni sounds _heartbroken_ , and Gerry fixes his gaze on the off-white ceiling of the hospital, trying to ignore the dull ache on his chest. What's that story about the scorpion and the frog?

"Well, it looks like it's finally just you and me, then. Free to do what we want at last." he tries for a smile, but it doesn't quite take. Just _who_ is he, when he's not being used by someone? What does he _want_?

"What if they need help with the Unknowing?" she asks. Sometimes it's easy to forget she's his soul, but it's hard to deny it, when she's so willing to forgive the ones that hurt them just because they're so desperate for a scrap of love.

"They will manage," he says, scratching softly behind her ears. "They always do. I think- they'll be fine."

Gerry was useful, but he was never _necessary_ , and this is nothing if not a clear reminder of that.

"I'm tired, Gerry." Boni whines at his chest. She's a beautiful daemon, and she deserved a much better life than the one she got by his side. "I want to go home."

It's the longing in her voice that resonates with the absence he's carried around for almost three decades, what finally brings a burn to the corners of his eyes. They survived, they have a life now, but there's nothing left of them after so many years of giving it all away for others.

"I- Boni, I don't know where that is."

* * *

_The call comes from an unknown number._

_Many things are unknown ever since he woke up. The Watcher no longer whispers in his ear -the doctors had been horrified, he hears, after the main surgeon dropped his tumour on the floor, and the eye turned to look at each of them in turn- and for all that Gerry's ultimately relieved, he misses the convenience of it. It's hard to trust people, without knowing their intentions, their motivations._

_But still, here stands Gerry Delano, no longer a puppet, no longer a tool. Just a man standing at the produce aisle at the supermarket, holding a pineapple on a hand, and a phone ringing with a call from an unknown number on the other._

_"Who is this, and how did you get this number?" he asks into the receiver._

_'How are you doing, Gerard?' the caller asks, and Gerry feels his knees grow weak._

_Boni raises her hackles and growls in response to his anxiety, and the other shoppers give them an even wider berth. He drops the fruit back on the shelf before leaning heavily on the half-full cart._

_"...Fine. If you really care to know, that is." The words leave a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, like waking up alone at the hospital, like knowing you were disposable._

_Half the world away, the woman sighs._

_'That's good, at least.'_

_"What do you want, Gertrude?"_

_'Nothing. I have some things to do now, while the Eye is distracted.'_

_"The Unknowing?" he arches an eyebrow. Is this some weird sentimentality because she thinks she won't make it?_

_'The Dark. Or not, hopefully. We'll see.'_

_"I'm- what does that even mean? Gertrude, I'm not going anywhere. You can't just call me back like a dog when you-"_

_The call clicks to an end._

* * *

She doesn't need to call him back, it turns out.

He holds strong for two more years, but in the end he goes back himself, leaving behind the meager semblance of a life he'd managed to scrape together in LA. 

He never really planned to stay here, he realizes when he sees every possession he's managed to gather in the last years fit into two suitcases. Also notable are the lack of goodbyes and wish-you-well's. For all that he teased Gertrude about being a hermit, it looks like he wasn't too different himself. 

Much to his frustration, they're back into their old roles as soon as they step off the plane. Boni's tail is stiff behind her, every muscle tense in preparation for a fight. It's jarring, after seeing her so relaxed for the last three years, but this is the armor they wear. It has served well against the monsters, and to keep everyone away.

The Institute looks like it's waiting for him, and from what Gerry knows, it very well may have been. The receptionist gives him a shocked look, but he doesn't acknowledge her, and she doesn't greet him. It's understandable that she's surprised, he never thought he'd be back either.

He never asked for her name, he realizes, and it's yet another evidence of how little he cared. 

The door to the Archives is open, and the one to the Head Archivist's office is too. 

"They'll be happy to see us," Boni whispers when he hesitates. It sounds wistful, and Gerry doesn't bother to acknowledge it before he strides into the office. 

"Before you even start, I'm not doing anything until you apologize for not telling me- who are you?" he asks, stopping abruptly at the threshold. 

Gertrude isn't sitting behind her desk, which is covered in half-burned... statements, apparently.

Instead the only people in the office are a tall, fat man with tears streaking down his face and a mouse daemon peeking out from his hair, and a short woman with brightly dyed hair, clutching a tape recorder and looking at him warily. 

"I believe that's _our_ line. Who are you?" she asks, climbing to her feet and planting herself firmly between him and the other man. He likes her immediately, when he realizes the hare daemon squaring off against a growling Boni -who is easily thrice his size- must be hers. 

"You're him, aren't you?" The man stands up as well, and he's even taller than Gerry thought at first, or rather he looks that way when compared to the woman. "Gerard Keay."

Gerry straightens up, squaring his shoulders as Boni makes herself look bigger. "Looks like you know a bit more than me. Now tell me. Where is Gertrude Robinson?"

The man grimaces at the same time that the woman lets out a bark of laughter. 

"You're a bit out of the loop, huh?"

* * *

_Gertrude is dead._

The words cycle in his mind like a curse, like a bad joke. Gerry feels numb, as he drives the rental car towards the House of Wax, just like he did when he walked across the street to the little coffeeshop with his mother's blood on his hands.

Gertrude is dead, and if she is then what will happen to him? What is he supposed to do? What hope is there, if these things managed to take Gertrude Robinson down?

"We go on," Boni says from the copilot seat. "We're the only ones left. We're her legacy."

Gerry's hands tighten around the wheel as he grits his teeth. "She left us. She didn't _care_ , Boni."

"She called to ask how we were," his daemon replies, and then she turns to the window, and says nothing more.

She's right about something though; if Gertrude is dead -stop thinking about it, stop thinking about _her_ -, then they're the only ones left to lift the mantle. This new 'team' seems woefully unprepared and uninformed, but maybe he can whip them into shape. Maybe he can ensure at least some of them will survive.

He only pushes harder on the gas pedal, when the explosion shakes the whole block. Gertrude is dead _-stop-_ , and he's got to make sure her replacement isn't too.

There's a woman sitting before the wreckage, as passersby scream and run and sirens start screeching their song in the distance. Her owl daemon (he thinks of Dekker immediately, even though the woman's daemon is smaller and sharper, built for speed and a good fight) is perched on her shoulder, his face hidden under his wing.

"Where are the others?" Gerry asks as soon as he reaches her. "You're Basira, right? I need-"

"I _am_ Basira," the woman repeats quietly. "I was in a place, but I got out. I just- I need a moment."

Boni barks once, loudly enough to call the woman's attention and make her daemon look up. "We don't _have_ a moment," she snarls. "Get in the car!"

Gerry pushes and pulls at her as gently as he can, until he maneuvers her into the backseat- she's mumbling something about a Daisy, about a Jon. "Stay here, try to- think of someone that wasn't in there with you. The two from the Institute, your pet. Just... anything you _know_." 

He slams the door shut, before running back to the remnants of the museum. 

"Do you think anyone else made it?" He asks Boni, who's sniffing around in the debris and going as far as their bond will allow her. "I mean, they-"

Boni lets out a surprised bark when some of the rubble near her shifts. Gerry rushes to her side after picking a hand-sized lump of brick and mortar; it's not a great weapon if a Stranger survived, but it's better than nothing.

The rubble shifts a bit more, and a daemon comes out. She looks normal enough that Gerry drops his improvised weapon; Stranger daemons are easy to identify, uncanny stuffed things with cold, lifeless eyes, the same sense of uneasiness to them as there is with good taxidermy. They look real enough, but not _alive_.

"Where's your human?" Boni asks, coming closer until she can press her nose to the other dog daemon's flank. It's not entirely unexpected, when she yelps and turns and bites, her tail curled between her legs. Boni doesn't move, and Gerry doesn't flinch from the pain blooming across his nose and cheek; they're used to this, and whoever this person is, they need to know he's on their side. "Where's your human? We can help you get them out."

The other daemon doesn't answer, turning back to the rubble instead. She goes back in, digging and whining until she seems to find what she's looking for.

Gerry approaches carefully after Boni nods, shifting the debris around until the daemon is able to drag a tall, limp man from beneath. He's only barely conscious, his dark skin bruised and scraped and sticking out here and there with bits of broken crystal and wood. He'll have to leave this one, Gerry knows immediately; he needs a hospital, or he won't make it. 

His daemon lets go of his shoulder and gives his cheek a lick, but where Gerry expects her to curl down around him and pass out as well, she instead dives back into the remnants of the wax house.

She pulls out a small unconscious cat daemon, their fur black with white patches at the chest and paws, and arranges them carefully close -but not touching- to her human, before she turns to them with bared teeth. 

"If you touch them, I will _kill_ you," she snarls, before going back down.

"Well, that's unnecessary." Gerry sighs. "Come on, we should-" he cuts himself short then, because the dog daemon is back again, and her teeth are clamped down on the shoulder of a slender, shorter man. 

Gerry and Boni watch in stunned silence, as this daemon touches another human so purposefully, pulling him out until he's laying next to the cat daemon, which must be his, considering how even in unconsciousness they seem to curl towards the other.

"What do you want?" The dog daemon snarls again, standing over both humans with her fur standing on end and her teeth bared. She can't possibly be of the impression that she'll win a fight against Boni, Gerry thinks, not in her current state. But she seems _very_ willing to go down biting. 

"Martin and Melanie sent us," Gerry says. Lying was what Gertrude did, and he won't start that way. If they've come this far, they deserve the truth. "Basira's in the car, she's safe. But I think you four need a real doctor, so I'm going to leave you here, and tell the others you're alive."

"Are we?" The dog daemon looks at him as she curls with her head on her human's chest.

"I'm sorry," he says, because there's a certain sadness in her eyes that Gerry has seen often enough in the mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abusive/neglectful parents: Mary leaves a young Gerry (around 5 years old) unattended for periods of time long enough that it is mentioned he runs out of food at one point. No explicit abuse is described.  
> Non consensual daemon touching: Mary utilizes corporal punishment to discipline young Gerry, in the form of hurting his daemon.  
> Mentions of cancer: self-explanatory  
> Hospitals: Gerry is mentioned to wake up at a hospital after having his brain tumour surgically removed. Some references to the surgery are also made, but it's not explicitly described.


	2. Tim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Canon character death  
> Self-hatred  
> Mentions of stalking  
> Implied manipulation  
> Mentioned/implied memory loss
> 
> See end notes for more information.

Tim settles fairly early on, which he supposes is no surprise. He's always been confident and comfortable in himself, and Agni chooses a form with vibrant purple feathers and a long, striped tail. She flutters around him as he walks, and people who aren't already looking at him have no choice but to see _her_. 

"You're a showoff," Tim berates her, playfully ruffling her feathers with the tip of a finger.

"Bold words, coming from you." Agni pecks softly at his nose in retaliation.

He loves how beautiful she is, but doesn’t really focus on it. Until she changes, that is.

* * *

_They wake up, and the clock on their bedside table -next to the little nest Agni made out of Tim's socks- signals 4.35 in the morning._

_"Are you okay?" Tim asks his daemon, unsure of what woke him up. Is he hungry? Thirsty? None of the two correspond to the feeling of_ **_wrongness_ ** _boiling in his chest._

_"I'm- I don't know," Agni whispers back._

_She perches on his shoulder when he climbs out of bed, because there's_ **_something_ ** _wrong, and they need to figure out why. Maybe they're just nervous because Danny hasn't called them back from his stupid adventure at the Royal Opera House._

_"That's got to be good news though, right?" Tim mutters. He's not sure if he's trying to convince Agni or himself, though then again it's pretty much the same thing. "If he hasn't called, but the police haven't called, then he didn't get caught breaking and entering, at least."_

_"...Or he's hurt, and he needs help."_

_The distance between them and the bedroom door seems to go on for miles and miles, and the bedroom feels a lot colder than it ought to._

_"I'm- I'm sure they're fine," Tim resolves, clenching his fists by his sides. "Let's- I need some water. Then we text them."_

* * *

"Can you change the song?" Tim asks. He's hard at work flipping through three different police reports he's got strewn over the office floor and highlighting a fourth, trying to find a connection to a statement he's pretty sure is bullshit, and he can't focus on it if the music isn't _just right._ "It hasn't got a password."

"Anything specific?" Jon reaches for the phone, his daemon's sharp eyes still focused on work, sorting pictures of some abandoned mental facility with their little paws.

They've fallen into some easy companionship, he and Jon. Research is better with a partner, and though Jon _looks_ quiet, he has just the right sort of dry humor that can still startle a chuckle out of Tim. It's been happening more often lately, and Tim thinks he just might be starting to heal.

He rattles out a song and a band, and nods appreciatively when the tune changes accordingly. _Now_ they can get some work done, debunking dumb ghost stories and maybe, if they're lucky, find something about the cir-

"Jon?" Agni asks, and Tim freezes. Her tone is anxious, almost _afraid_ , and when he whips his head up, he finds that Jon is still looking down at the phone in his hands.

"Going through my camera reel there, Jon? I won't be made responsible if you see something you weren't expecting." Tim arches an eyebrow, confused.

"No, I just- I tapped out on accident," Jon responds, his face still a mask Tim doesn't quite know how to read. His gaze slides over to Agni, as if taking note of her warm spotted fur and long snout for the first time. "I- I didn't know she used to be a bird."

Tim feels as though every drop of blood has frozen in his veins, the highlighter falling from his numb fingers and clattering away on the floor. "I-"

"This- this form suits you quite well too, Agni. Pointers are very smart dogs." Jon places the phone on Tim's desk, before turning back to him. "Did you find anything about that 'man with no face', then?"

Tim's mouth moves around words he can't quite form, speechless in a way he seldom is. He'd forgotten the picture set as his phone background, with him and Agni out on a rock-climbing trip, but what matters now is that _Jon isn't asking about it_ , merely bringing his stash of photographs to sit on the floor with them.

"I- not really. I think this might be a fake one," he forces himself to say.

"Just this one, Tim?" Jon arches an eyebrow at him, picking back on their normal routine.

Tim's head is still reeling, but he composes his features into a smile. Jon doesn't mind. He doesn't care, and most importantly, he didn't ask. 

"We'll find you a real spook, Jon, just be patient."

* * *

_They don't need to text him, in the end._

_When they come out, Danny's sitting in the living room, still as a statue on the overstuffed armchair. His eyes are fixed on Tim's bedroom door, unblinking, not even cold insomuch as empty. Udra sits on his shoulder, her bright blue and white feathers a desaturated grey in the pre-dawn penumbra._

_She's wrong, Tim knows immediately._

_Something about her is wrong, though he can't tell exactly what. Her beady black eyes look glassy, and her little chest doesn't expand and contract with her breathing. More importantly, she rests on Danny's shoulder like a stiff, artificial prop, her head tilting to one side and the other with movements that look almost robotic._

_"Danny? I didn't know you were back, we were starting to get worried," Tim says. It feels important for some reason to not raise his voice above a whisper, almost like there's something else in the room with them, that Tim very much doesn't want to disturb._

_Danny turns his head, first sideways, then up until his eyes meet Tim's- but they don't, not really. They're looking at his eyes, but not at him._

_"I am back," he says, enunciating the words clearly and devoid of inflection, like some sort of reader software._

_"I- that's good. Did you- did you find what you were looking for?"_

_Danny nods, a movement that looks almost practiced, down for two beats, then back up, rinse and repeat. A textbook perfect gesture he's_ **_never_ ** _seen any human use, let alone his brother._

_"Are- Danny, are you okay?" Tim feels Agni's talons dig deeper though the thin fabric of his sleeping t-shirt. She would be all over Udra by now, preening her feathers into order, but Tim knows a crowbar wouldn't be enough to pry his daemon from his shoulder right now._

_"I am," Danny says. He could be confirming he's okay, or -and the strange thought comes to Tim's mind suddenly and without any explanation- he could simply be proclaiming that he is Daniel Stoker._

_Both would be a lie, Tim knows somehow._

* * *

"I mean you can try to spoil it for me, but then I'll just binge season five and ruin you," Sasha says with a grin and a shrug, and Tim laughs. 

"Didn't you say you just finished season two?"

"My thirst for revenge knows no limits, not even my own satisfaction." She shrugs, unaware that she just described Tim's entire reason for being at the Institute. "Also I don't have any plans for the weekend."

"You could've started there, you know?" Tim rolls his eyes. Would it be too forward? 

They only met a couple weeks ago, when he offered to go get some pictures of a jar of presumably immortal spiders, because Jon pretended to be fine with the assignment but Tim saw Toris poof up to three times their size under his desk. Still, Sasha's very attractive, and smart and funny, and she's like Jon in that she makes him forget for just a moment that he's only planning on living until he destroys the thing that took his brother. 

"Well, now you know." Sasha winks. 

"I could fix that," Tim says. It feels like taking a risk, like the old him. Like the Tim that slips in now and then through the cracks in the grief.

"Oh? No plans with the boyfriend?"

Tim blinks a couple times, until he catches on to what she's implying, and then he chuckles.

"Nah, Jon's not my boyfriend. I don't think I'm his type, you know?" He shrugs. 

"Huh." Sasha's daemon, a butterfly with striking orange eyespots on his blue and black wings, flutters down from the end of her braid to land delicately on Agni's nose. "And here I was thinking he had good taste."

 _Oh_.

* * *

_They can't move._

_Danny needs them -Danny doesn't, or at least not this thing that Danny is now-, and they're frozen in place, watching as the clown without a daemon reaches their hands for him._

_Udra falls to the floor of the stage when Danny's skin is ripped off, bouncing off the hardwood boards in the same stiff, lifeless position she held on her human's shoulder. Her head still tilts from side to side like a wind-up toy, until the clown wraps a hand around her, and lifts her up to their face._

_Their eyes are empty of life when they meet Tim's across the theater, but tinged with the same dark amusement of his too-wide smile._

_Tim can't look away, no matter how hard he tries, and he's treated to a first row show of the clown's mouth opening, and his rows of too-sharp teeth closing around Udra's still moving neck._

* * *

"I'm- I was wondering-" Jon clears his throat again. "I was offered a new position. Head- replacing Gertrude Robinson. I- I'd like it if you'd move down to the Archives with me."

Toris is curled up under a desk, swiping at Agni's nose whenever she tries to go in with them. The sight, Tim decides, is strangely endearing, like most everything about Jon and his soul.

"Only if you keep giving me completely unprompted informative sessions about whatever topic is in your mind at the moment, those are the best part of my week."

Toris jumps out of their hidey-hole, and Agni allows herself to be toppled over and bitten-groomed-bitten, with Jon's embarrassed sputtering and Tim's cackling in the background.

* * *

_"...Is that why you chose to work at the Institute?" Sasha's voice is a quiet murmur in the darkness of the room._

_Tim doesn't answer, still trying to calm his racing heart, to blink away the image of Grimaldi with the rivulets of golden Dust running down his chin._

_"You're hunting," says a deep, rich baritone voice. Tim had never heard Calliope speak before, but he can imagine him perched on Agni's ear like a colorful bow. "I suppose it makes sense."_

_"She wasn't- we weren't always like this," Tim says, because they- it feels important that they know they weren't always broken. "She was beautiful before, she-"_

_"Tim!" Sasha snaps, stunning him into silence. "Don't- you_ **_survived_ ** _that! She's beautiful_ **_now_ ** _, you hear me?"_

_What he hears is the quiet flapping of Calliope's wings, feels the slight disturbance of air before his face._

_"Is this okay?" Sasha asks softly. Tim feels his heart catch in his throat, and it's all he can do to give her a silent nod in response._

_Calliope's tiny feet feel like six live wires connecting with his nose, so intense that Tim has to close his eyes against the onslaught of emotions pouring in from him._

_He sees Agni through his eyes, her spotted, messy fur, her sad amber gaze. She's made up of jagged edges, broken and hurt, and_ **_perfect_ ** _._

_"Nobody's born finished," Calliope says, bringing his wings down to caress Tim's sticky wet cheeks._

* * *

"You are _not_ the love interest," Sasha laughs, and Tim laughs too, pretends to be deadly offended, but he has to agree. 

In some other timeline, Agni and Calliope flutter together in the sky, instead of her watching wistfully at the way he dances in the air, or him forfeiting his freedom to stay down with her. 

He still loves Sasha -how could he not?-, but she deserves the man he could've been, not the husk the circus left behind.

* * *

The Archives feel almost like home, sometimes. 

It's the little things, Jon waiting for him every Friday even though he hates going for drinks, Sasha leaving empty tea boxes on Martin's desk because his daemon likes to sleep inside them. 

Some days Tim thinks he'll look at Agni and find that she's sprouted wings again.

* * *

_He pulls Jon tight against him, but it's futile and he knows it. The worms are coming at them from every side, and there's not a single inch of floor visible outside of the rapidly closing circle they're standing on._

_At least Martin is safe, and Sasha is too._

_And if Tim has to die, then- then it's good to do it with a friend by his side._

_Agni lays on top of Toris' smaller frame, covering them even as they attempt to swipe the encroaching worms away._

_Tim takes a deep breath, and holds on to Jon just as the wave of warm, silky bodies washes over them._

* * *

"-haven' noticed you're stalking me?!" Tim snarls. 

"Tim, there's no need to-"

"No, actually I think there's _all_ the need, Martin," he lifts a hand to shut the man up. He's tired _so tired_ of his quiet, broken assurances that Jon doesn't mean them harm, that they should give him some time to get himself sorted. "He thinks he's the only one who went through all this crap, but I was right there with you, you _asshole_!"

"That doesn't-"

"It _does_ ! Do you think- do you honestly _believe_ we orchestrated all this, Jon?"

" _I don't know_ !" Jon screams back. Every muscle in his body's tense, Toris is a ball of poofed up fur curled over themself by his ankles, and it's at that moment that it rains down on Tim that Jon is genuinely, honest to god _afraid of him_.

It somehow hits even harder than plain suspicion did. 

Agni takes a careful step forward, her ears lowered and her tail giving the weakest wag behind her. "Toris-"

"I think it's better to give Jon a moment," Sasha says a second before Calliope lands on her preferred spot on Agni's nose. Her bright orange wings with the large blue eyelets seem to glare at Jon, who's still breathing shallowly and looking at them with wide, anxious eyes. 

"Yes," Tim bites out, and the way Jon and Martin flinch at his tone makes him want to _scream_. "Yes, I think we should. Don't come near my house again, or I'm calling the cops."

* * *

_Sasha isn't Sasha._

_Jon looks... fragile, when he tells him, no doubt worried about his reaction, but Tim is so_ **_tired_ ** _._

_"I know you were-"_

_"You don't know shit, Jon," Tim cuts him, his words punctuated by Agni's growl. She's grown feral these past months, as if reminding him that none of this would have happened if he'd focused on the circus from the get go, like they were supposed to do. "That's what got us into this mess."_

_"-close," Jon finishes lamely. "I'm- I'll just go. I thought- I thought it was best if I was the one to- I didn't want you to yell at Martin."_

_"I don't want to yell at Martin," Tim crosses his arms over his chest._

_Jon looks at him for a long moment, like he's expecting him to say something else, but Tim doesn't. He's vaguely aware he should feel sad, enraged,_ **_something_ ** _other than the muted sense of emptiness in his chest._

_"I'm- I'll just go."_

_"Best idea you've had in a while."_

_He does leave then, though Toris stays behind for a couple minutes; he's always had an uncannily wide range with them._

_"I wish you hadn't come with us," they say. Tim has known them for years now, well enough to notice that both their eyes used to be yellow, and the green one looks off in their face. "I wish you'd said no."_

_Agni flashes her teeth at them, but says nothing. She rarely even speaks to Tim anymore._

_"That makes two of us," Tim says quietly, before the cat daemon's bond is stretched thin enough that they have to retreat._

* * *

He wakes up at the hospital, and when he looks down at Agni, he half expects her to have changed again. What do they need to be, now that they achieved their goal?

She's still herself, her warm brown-white fur a welcome, familiar sight over the pure white sheets. She opens an eye as he stares, and gives him a weak wag of her tail. 

Broken and hurt, and _beautiful_ , wasn't it?

"Hey there," a man says somewhere far away. Tim turns, and is surprised to find him sitting only a few feet away from the bed. The same one that greeted them when Agni pulled him out into the light, with his imposing black dog daemon, sitting statue-like by his side. "We didn't think you'd wake up. Jon hasn't."

It's a bit of a surprise how much those words hurt. 

"He's- he's alive too?" Agni asks, standing up on three unsteady legs. She follows the man's gaze to the other bed in the room, where Jon lays immobile except for the rise and fall of Toris on his chest. 

The man's daemon says something then. She's got a much softer voice than Tim expected, her yellow eyes looking kindly up at Agni on the bed.

"I'm- sorry, what?" Tim asks. He feels more than hears Agni's whine, when she leans heavily on his arm. "I didn't- I can't-"

"Thanks to you," the daemon repeats, a bit louder. "You saved them."

"Why- I-"

"The doctor said that was expected," the man says, a sympathetic expression softening his features. "You were at the center of an explosion, your hearing- it may not come back in full."

Oh. That's- oh. 

"Will it be the same for him?" He asks dryly, tipping his chin towards Jon. 

"Maybe, though at this point we'll actually have more problems if he does wake up, so I'd rather not risk it," the man sighs. "Not that Martin will listen, but still."

The man's daemon snickers, her tail drumming a frantic rhythm on the carpeted floor. "The stubbornness is part of the charm."

Tim scowls. That can't be right.

"How long was I...?" 

"Hm? Oh. It's been about three months since the Unknowing. Elias is in jail, everyone's alive except Daisy, Jon's in a coma, you just woke up. I think that covers it all."

"I'm- who were you again?" 

"Huh. Yeah, I guess I forgot about that," the man says, looking uncomfortable for the first time as he runs his hand through his long black hair. A hand that, Tim notices, has a small, detailed eye tattooed at every knuckle. "Gerry. Gerry Delano. This is Boni."

"No, you're- you're the guy from the statements, aren't you?" Tim frowns as his memory tries desperately to recall the specific name. "Gerald- something."

The man gives him an impassive look, which is made somewhat less solemn by his daemon's pink tongue poking out of her closed mouth in a gesture of distaste.

"Like I said. Gerry Delano." Okay. Tim isn't stupid, and a name change is by far the least strange thing about this situation. 

"So- so what, Gertrude left you as a sort of failsafe for the next team?"

Gerry laughs, a short, mirthless sound that makes Tim want to avert his gaze, and apologize for asking.

"That would've made some sense at least. No, she didn't. But I'm here now, and I'm the best you've got."

"Got a high opinion of yourself, haven't you?"

"The way I see it, out of the two of us only one has ended up blowing up a building with themselves in it. So yes, you could say that," Gerry smirks. "I'll go tell Martin you woke up. Try to get some rest."

And he leaves, closing the door behind him and leaving Tim alone with his thoughts.

"Agni?" he asks after a moment, eyeing the slow, steady rise and fall of the heart rate monitor by Jon's bed. Does he dread or wish for it to go flat? "Why did you go back for them?"

"You know why," Agni says simply, curling up on his lap even though she's too big a dog to do so. 

"...Yeah. I guess I do."

* * *

_"So what's the deal with tall, artificially dark and very handsome?" Tim asks._

_Martin's face whips around to him from where he's fixing the wilted flowers on the bedside table. "Gerry? He's helping us."_

_Tim rolls his eyes. "I_ **_know_ ** _he's helping us Martin, I'm talking about his massive crush on you."_

 _"I have_ **_no idea_ ** _what you're talking about," Martin responds, his face carefully blank. Despite the apparent embarrassment, he doesn't turn away just so that Tim can keep reading his lips, and it makes something warm ache in his chest._

_"We're being obtuse about it," comes Votem's voice, and Tim turns to find the mouse daemon sitting atop Agni's head, giving his human and unimpressed stare. "We're really good at denial, apparently."_

_"Shut up, you." Martin rolls his eyes. Tim knows him though, and he's seen that delightfully flushed frown._

_"I told you you could do better than him." Tim gestures at the body between them. Both Toris and Jon are looking skinnier by the day, and they show no sign of waking up. Tim wonders how much more they can last, and if he wants them to. "Glad to see you took my advice."_

_"Gerry's just a friend," Martin insists. "He's- he's not interested."_

_His frown softens when he goes to push a lock of hair out of Jon's face, and Tim gathers that some things don't change, for better or for worse._

_"You hear that, boss?" He flicks at Jon's ear, but doesn't even touch him. Whatever urge he had to hurt him before, it's been mostly satisfied by seeing him lying broken on the bed. Most days he just wishes he'd wake up, maybe that way he'd figure out if he actually hates him or not. "You better hoof it back before the pretty goth is interested."_

_"Would you stop bothering him? He's in a coma."_

_Tim shrugs. "He'd do the same if it was me."_

_"No, he wouldn't."_

_"...No, I suppose not."_

* * *

The woman walks into the Institute on a Thursday a week after Tim's been discharged. It's just him, Martin and Basira at the Archives, with Melanie away with a friend and Gerry on Jon duty.

Her long black hair is tied into a messy, frazzled braid, and her eyes look around the room like she isn't quite too sure of how she got there, but she moves with the familiarity of one that knows the space, even stepping over the squeaky floorboard without giving it a second thought. 

"Can we help you?" Basira asks, arching an eyebrow. Customer service really flies out the window when the boss is in jail and also an evil rat, Tim supposes.

The woman stops on her tracks, still looking around the office with an expression somewhere between wonder and puzzlement.

"It- it feels right, here," she says quietly enough that Tim can't hear her, but he reads her lips well enough.

"Um- e- excuse me?" Martin stands up. "I'm sorry, you really can't be he-"

"It- I think I live here?" She asks, a bit louder. Her voice makes something in Tim's stomach drop, and he tries to place her face. It's a common face, pretty, kind. One he couldn't pick out in a crowd if he tried.

Tim sighs and stands up, because someone will have to escort this girl out, Martin is too kind and Basira has the tact of a charging bull.

"Trust me, this would be a pretty lousy place to live," he says kindly as he steps up to her. "Come on, let me take you upstairs, and we can call someone to pick you up."

The woman looks at him with big, unreadable eyes he _swears_ he-

"I know you," she says, no hesitation whatsoever to her voice.

"I- I think I'd remember-"

He hears Martin and Basira gasp behind him, and Tim sees a flash of bright blue wings with orange eyelets, before something lands on his face, and he _knows_.

"Sasha."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon character death: Danny Stoker  
> Self-hatred: Tim's in a really bad state after Danny's death, even after he begins to heal emotionally  
> Mentions of stalking: Jon stalks his coworkers during season 2 just like in canon  
> Implied manipulation: Not!Sasha not-too-subtly pitting Tim against the others  
> Mentioned/implied memory loss: Sasha (the real one) has lost almost all her memories after having her identity taken by the Stranger


	3. Melanie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Canon typical body horror  
> Canon typical Slaughter aggression  
> Harm to daemons  
> Non consensual daemon touching (not sexual in nature)  
> Self mutilation  
> See end notes for more information.

Dad's already started to lose things by the time Melanie and Vis settle. 

He looks at them with concerned eyes -and that's the worst part, Melanie thinks, how he  _ knows _ he's powerless against his own mind- and a disconcerted smile.

"Oh, I- I thought Vis was a moth?"

"I'm- he just settled yesterday, dad," Melanie says at fifteen, seventeen, twenty two. "Turns out he's a hare."

"That's- those are good. Feisty. Smart. It fits." He nods to himself thoughtfully, before adding like he's added every single time before. "You'll always be my little moth, though.

"Thanks, dad," Melanie smiles, because the love in the silly little nickname never stops feeling any less real, no matter that his daemon hasn't spoken in weeks, that she looks through Melanie instead of at her.

She's his little moth, and that's that.

* * *

_ There's something  _ **_incredibly_ ** _ wrong with Sarah Baldwin. _

_ She smells of thick, cloying floral perfume, so heavy that it makes Melanie dizzier than the cigarette smoke, and even then is still unable to cover the hint of something else underneath, a sort of acrid, sterile stench that makes her think of solvents. _

_ Her daemon is a coral snake -or a fake coral? How's the saying go, red on black, red on yellow? Why does the second feel so much more dangerous than the first?- that hangs limply from her neck like a scarf, his only sign of life the slithering tongue that pokes out of his mouth every thirty or so seconds. _

_ "Resting," Sarah says when Toni asks if he's okay. They all know it's a lie, but none of them can figure out what that would even  _ **_mean_ ** _ , so they leave it at that. _

* * *

"I'm just saying you know it's not real, just admit all you want is a reason to break into abandoned buildings." Jon rolls his eyes. 

Melanie rolls hers right back. "See here, I thought I could get a useful answer out of you, but I forgot you're the most boring man alive."

"Very mature." He rolls his eyes again, just as Vis hops back on his hind legs to smack his daemon on the head. "By all means go ahead, but when we have to bail you out because you got caught trespassing for YouTube views, I  _ will _ say I told you so."

"That's all the motivation I need to  _ not _ get caught, see? You  _ did _ help! I'll credit you at the end of each episode."

"Please don't."

"Oh, now I have to." Melanie laughs. "Besides, how come you aren't nearly this skeptical when it comes to your ghost podcaster girlfriend?"

Jon sighs, but he has the decency to at least look embarrassed. "At this point I'm starting to suspect Georgie's podcast is actually a comedy."

"And you haven't told her because you realized she's way out of your league and don't want her to have second thoughts?" She pushes at his shoulder with hers, and chuckles when Jon doesn't dignify that with an answer, but Toris still tackles Vis to the ground.

* * *

_ Sarah isn't there when Melanie wakes up.  _

_ This is upsetting for a myriad of reasons; she was supposed to be keeping watch for ghosts, transients and cops all the same, and she just fucking up and left them all sleeping there on the open.  _

_ Most upsetting of all though, is the fact that her daemon was left behind, dropped in a tangled heap by the EMF reader.  _

_ "Shy my ass," Vis mutters quietly by her side, his ears twitching nervously. The daemon doesn't move, doesn't lift his head, but he's still poking his tongue out, exactly every thirty seconds, like he's been programmed to do so. _

_ "Maybe- maybe she just has a long range," Melanie whispers back, painfully aware of the lie even as it leaves her lips. Most people can't be more than six feet away from their daemons, let alone in an entirely different room.  _

_ "Do you want me to check on him?"  _

_ "...No." Melanie doesn't take her eyes off of the limp, dark form as she crouches to pick Vis up in her arms.  _

_ He  _ **_hates_ ** _ being lifted -especially since he settled-, but he doesn't say a word this time, merely pressing himself closer to her chest as she begins the trek out into the hospital. _

* * *

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming?" Jon asks, his voice that slow and careful tone Melanie knows and  _ despises _ from when he thinks she's being unreasonable. Toris is curled over her daemon, grooming him in an attempt to keep him calm and succeeding only in making  _ both _ of them even angrier. "You've- um- you've always had an active imagination."

"You're fucking kidding me."

"Melanie-"

"No,  _ fuck you _ . I came here because I thought you'd listen-"

"I warned you before we started-"

"I thought it would be  _ different _ , you idiot!" Melanie flies to her feet, and Vis gets Jon's daemon off of him with a well-aimed kick that has them hissing in alarm. 

"What, because it's you?"

"Yes, because it's me. What reason would I have to lie to you, Sims?!"

"Melanie-"

Whatever else he's got to say is lost when Melanie slams the door to his stupid office behind her. 

* * *

_ "-idn't mean to trespass, I- I apolog-" Sarah doesn't get to finish, before she's flying away, cracking against the wall and slumping on the floor like a broken doll. _

_ Melanie doesn't expect to see her rise again, doesn't  _ **_want_ ** _ her to rise. _

_ Sarah rises from the floor. _

_ "I understand. I'll make sure they don't interfere with anything," she says calmly, before taking her jacket off. _

_ Melanie has seen a few videos of snakes shedding their skin, she even had a girlfriend with a snake daemon -a real one, not like whatever monstrosity waits back by the EMF reader- in high school, and she saw him shed a couple times. Dana used to hold him by the neck with a hand and roll the old skin off with the other; Melanie found it as disturbing as it was fascinating, and just like now, she could never look away. _

_ Sarah reaches into her skinless arm to right something -Melanie both hopes and doubts it is a bone- inside, before she slides the skin back up and staples it at her shoulder. _

* * *

There's a lot of harmful stereotypes associated with 'prey' daemons. Delicate people that need to be cared for, more suited to escaping their problems than solving them. Melanie's always thought this is bullshit. 

Fight or flight is a prey instinct, and she's never been much of a runner.

* * *

_ "You knew we weren't lying," Toris whispers. Their bright yellow -no, there's- there's a green one now?- eyes glow like little moons in the darkness of the alley behind the institute.  _

_ "You're not killers," Melanie shrugs. It's a lot easier to meet Toris' gaze than it is to meet Jon's. _

_ "But you thought we were liars. With Sasha." _

_ "And what was I supposed to think?!" She whips around to look at Jon then. He's swimming in Georgie's clothes, and he looks at her like he doesn't know her.  _

_ "I don't really know. I'm- I need help, Melanie. You're- you're inside now, and you and Georgie are the only ones who still believe-" Jon stops when she snorts an ugly bark of laughter.  _

_ "I needed you when I told you about Sarah Baldwin," she spits out. This imbecile doesn't change, doesn't see the effect he has on people. "What do you want?" _

* * *

Elias has to die. 

It startles her a bit how quickly she comes to this conclusion after Tim and Martin let her know she's effectively trapped in here with them. She's never thought about hurting a person before, but now all she can think of is wringing Elias' neck in her hands, stabbing his heart out of his chest, crush his little daemon under the sole of her shoe, and see how long it takes him to die after she dissolves into golden Dust.

She dreams of Vis growing claws and fangs,  _ anything _ to let him cause more damage, rip skin open and tear into flesh. She's never resented their form, but right now it doesn't feel  _ enough _ , and that's what angers her the most.

It's alright, they tell themselves, they're doing this to protect the others, to save themselves. If they kill Elias, they're all free, she's free, and all this rage that bubbles inside her was justified, it had a reason. 

It doesn't mean that she's broken, it never has.

When the man with the black dog daemon walks in on her trying to comfort Martin with the promise of more violence, it's all she can do to not throw herself at him.

Who the  _ fuck _ does he think he is, coming in here and thinking they need his  _ fucking _ help?

"Where is Gertrude Robinson?" he asks, and the veiled concern in his eyes calls to her like an exposed throat to sink her teeth into.

"You're a bit out of the loop, huh?"

* * *

_ She tries to hold it back, she really does.  _

_ When the Flesh attacks the Institute -just her luck to end up inadvertently following not only a fear god, but a fear god all the others hate- Melanie helps Basira in herding out the 'normal' employees, because keeping them safe is more important than fighting back, no matter what she wants, or that she can see something boiling under Vis' skin as he dashes to scout ahead.  _

_ "What are these things?!" Rosie shrieks as they push her up the stairs. _

_ "Shut up! Keep running!" Basira snarls back. Her Eadala flutters above her, his sharp gaze focused on everything at once, his talons clenching and unclenching in preparation for a fight.  _

_ "I am! I am running!" Rosie's cheeks are streaked in tears, and she's limping where one of her cute kitty heels broke off a while ago.  _

_ "Well, run faste- Basira?!" Melanie whips around with a last shove at Rosie, when she sees her collapse out the corner of her eye.  _

_ Basira thrashes and screams on the floor, and it takes Melanie a second to figure out why.  _

_ The tips of Eadala's tail feathers are the only part of him still visible, poking out from between the large,  _ **_too large_ ** _ hands of a- is it a man? His shoulders -there are  _ **_so many_ ** _ shoulders- press against both sides of the corridor, and when he opens his mouth Melanie sees rows and rows of teeth, and a large, red tongue easily the size of her hand.  _

_ "You haven't had owl wings in a while. These are some good wings. Fast." His voice sounds like he's chewing every syllable before rolling it out of his mouth, pasty and unrecognizable.  _

_ "That- it's- Melanie, his daemon," Vis says, his voice strained in fear. Melanie tears her eyes off of the man, and focuses instead on the- the creature by his side.  _

_ It takes her a moment to comprehend what she's seeing, a mass of  _ **_something_ ** _ that seems to be boiling slowly, paws and tails and wings and scales bubbling up to its surface as it moves towards its- is human even a valid term anymore?  _

_ "Little daemon, give us a wing. Or an eye, those are good eyes too." The man holds Eadala wide open with his large hands, and reaches towards his face with a third one that bubbles out of his stomach. Basira's still screaming, and Melanie feels something begin to burn in her stomach, just like  _ **_something_ ** _ bubbles beneath Vis' skin. _

_ They're trapped here, but they will not be victims. _

_ They will not be prey. _

* * *

"Good to have you back." Melanie sits next to Tim, bumping his shoulder with hers. "It was getting too chummy around here."

Tim rolls his eyes. "Are we going to pretend you're not buds with the Distortion, and I didn't just see you do a three steps handshake with the hot goth then?"

This earns him a punch to the arm as Melanie scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Don't tell me you're going to start thirsting over him too."

"Hah, I  _ knew _ Martin was into him."

"Congratulations, you have functional eyeballs," she huffs. "Have you met him? He's a stubborn idiot with zero regards for his self preservation."

"Yeah, that's- that's some quality Martin catnip there." Tim's laughter dies slowly at that, and Melanie sighs when she hears his daemon give a quiet, drawn out whine from her place under the desk. Of course she had to make it uncomfortable.

"I think he's just holding back because he feels guilty for him," she says, her gaze fixed on Vis' trembling ears, and the frayed edges of her hoodie's sleeves. "Or he's still waiting for him to wake up."

"...You aren't?" Tim asks quietly. His daemon chooses that moment to poke her head out of her hidey-hole and stare directly at her. Melanie wonders if she could smell it if she lied.

"Are you?" she asks instead. Her throat aches, and her hands itch to tear  _ something _ apart. It would be much less complicated that way, wouldn't it?

It's easier to forgive the dead.

* * *

_ "You've stabbed him a lot," Helen says casually. _

_ Melanie pushes the hair off her face to look up at her, and her hand comes out red and sticky. She pushes down on the roaring in her stomach that demands  _ **_more_ ** _ , kill him again, kill him  _ **_for good_ ** _ , tries to not look at Vis who's still tearing the man's daemon apart with his too-long legs and teeth and nails.  _

_ "He won't stay down," is all she responds.  _

_ "He wont." Helen smiles, and her daemon -is she a fox like Meme? Melanie's always thought she's a fox, but her legs are too long, her snout too big- smiles too. "I don't think you're ready to go killing us yet." _

_ "If you don't have anything useful to say-" Melanie bares teeth that feel like fangs- "get the fuck out of here already." _

_ "You need a place to put him in." _

* * *

"So is the collar functional, or just to hide the fact that she's a softie?" Melanie asks, as Gerry's daemon advances very carefully and very unsubtly towards Vis, her tail wagging softly while he's looking away, and freezing stiff when he looks at her.

Gerry clears his throat, and when she looks up at him Melanie smirks at the subtle hint of color on his cheeks. "She's not. It's- it's saved our necks a couple times, especially when we go against Hunt avatars. Or Slaughter," he adds. "Speaking of..."

"Hm?" Melanie doesn't pay him much mind, watching the not-softie daemon stick a pink tongue out to brush it against Vis' side.

"Are you sure you feel alright?" Gerry asks. She can hear the tense carefulness in his voice. There is worry in his eyes when he looks at her daemon, and she feels something hot and angry start to smolder at the mouth of her stomach.

"Why wouldn't I?" She asks coldly. Vis' sharp front teeth are only visible when he opens his mouth, and he's back to looking like a regular hare, though his skin boils and bubbles the angrier she grows.

"...Listen, I can't See anymo-"

"She's not getting better," Tim announces loudly as he comes into the room and goes to drop at his old desk. He looks a right mess, with dark bags under his eyes and tangled hair, his face still gaunt after the three months of coma. 

"Sasha?" Melanie asks. The name still feels strange on her tongue, still brings up the wrong person -not person, never a person- to her mind.

"She- she still remembers me, and- and her name, but that's pretty much it." Tim runs a hand through his hair, leaving it even more messed. "I'm- every picture I have of us shows the- the other one. Nothing I have done so far helps and-"

"You need to bring her here," Gerry cuts in with a sigh. Tim's face whips up to him, his mouth a tense, tight line, and Melanie gets the idea that this won't end well when Agni's hackles raise, and the fur at her back stands on end.

"Why on Earth would I do that? This place is the cause of our problems, and she's free now, I-"

"Listen. She- Sasha's case is unprecedented." Gerry's voice is soothing and careful again, and now that it's aimed at someone else, Melanie realizes with a start that the bastard is  _ copying Martin _ , which shouldn't be as endearing as it is. "The Not Them simply don't leave survivors behind. My best guess here is that when you blew up the Unknowing, you harmed the Stranger so deeply that it let go of whatever was left of her. I think- I think she might have been wandering under the Institute for a while before finding her way up."

"Nice. What does that have to do with bringing her back into this hellhole?" Tim asks, his voice barely audible over Agni's snarling. Boni lets out a long sigh, and plants her paws firmer on the hardwood floor. 

"Think about it, Tim. Before the Stranger took her, the Eye was Sasha's patron. I don't think we'll find anything more suited to helping her remember-"

"I'm not bringing her back. I'm not trapping her here again."

"Chances are you're going to  _ have _ to bring her in eventually. You both signed a contract, and you're already starting to look like shit, her dalliances with the Stranger can only protect her so much."

"I. Said. No." 

Agni looks feral by now, Melanie thinks. The whites of her eyes are showing, all her fur is standing on edge, and she's trembling a little on her legs like she's just waiting for a signal to-

"And what would  _ she _ say? Or are you just going to take the choice away from her?"

Yeah, that would do it. 

No one really wins the round in the end. Agni tackles and snarls and tries to bite around the spiked collar, making up for her lack of technique with pure, unfiltered rage, but Boni -who fights resignedly, tiredly- eventually manages to shove her away from herself.

The only sound in the room after the barking and growling is the daemon's heavy breathing, until Tim snaps to his feet and slams the door to the office closed behind him.

"Your conflict handling could use some work, if you ask me." Vis hops up to Boni, who's bleeding golden dust from a nasty bite to her ear.

"Shut up, Melanie."

* * *

_ Jon and Toris look- they look like themselves. _

_ Melanie wonders where her life went wrong, that that feels like a bad thing.  _

_ "We didn't think you'd wake up," she says.  _

_ 'I didn't know if I wanted you to,' she doesn't add.  _

_ She thinks Jon hears it anyways. _

* * *

Jon makes a quiet, surprised noise when the scalpel blade sinks into his shoulder. It's the same he used to make when she punched him on the shoulder after one of his bad jokes, and the memory makes Melanie see red. She  _ loved _ him, they were  _ friends _ , they were not supposed to end like this, never like this.

She feels Gerry's arms wrap around her, but it's almost laughably easy to throw him off. There's blood singing in her ears, and she knows the only thing that will quell its song is  _ more _ . 

"Melanie-" Toris' pained meow stills her hand a few inches from Jon's neck, and she turns to find the cat daemon laid on their back, with Vis' paws resting heavily on their throat and their yellow-green gaze fixed on her like she's the last thing they want to see before they go. "Melanie, I'm so sorry."

The scalpel clatters to the ground.

* * *

_ "-didn't give you the choice before, with- with the bullet," Jon stutters. His eyes don't meet hers; Melanie has long since given up on trying to figure out if he wants them to. "But I can give it to you now." _

_ A long, pregnant pause. _

_ "Why is it that bullshit surgery is the only way to deal with these things?" _

_ The corner of Jon's lips curls a little, and she feels hers do the same. _

* * *

By the time they get left out of the hospital, they've learned to get around based on what Vis can hear, and how things sound when tapped with Melanie's brand new cane.

Sometimes she taps  _ him _ instead, and she laughs when he curses and chews at it with long front teeth that no longer feel sharp under her fingers.

It will probably take a while to get used to it, both the lack of vision and the feeling of freedom. 

"Welcome home," Georgie whispers quietly into her ear. Meme makes that weird, chittering laugh foxes do, and Melanie smiles. The gesture feels weird in that it's not guarded or sarcastic, and it has no reason to be.

Life is different now, Melanie thinks.

Different, but good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon typical body horror: Including Sarah Baldwin stapling her arm back together and Jared Hopworth existing  
> Canon typical Slaughter aggression: Melanie's marked by the Slaughter like she was in canon, becoming volatile and aggressive as a result.  
> Harm to daemons: A couple daemons fight in this one, including Boni and Agni, and Vis (Melanie's daemon) and Hopworth's daemon.  
> Non consensual daemon touching (not sexual in nature): Jared Hopworth grabs Basira's daemon and threatens to take a wing or an eye from him.  
> Self mutilation: Melanie escapes the institute by blinding herself with an awl.


	4. Basira - Daisy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Mentions of corruption in the police  
> Canon typical Hunt induced murderous thoughts  
> Murder attempt  
> Dissociation  
> Claustrophobia  
> Suffocation
> 
> Basira and Daisy are not mentioned or implied to have taken part in police corruption or brutality, and only the first three POVs of this chapter mention them working as cops.

The Section 31 form is laid on the desk before her, but all Basira can see is the crime scene photos of Spencer in his boiling tub. He wasn't a nice man, but he didn't deserve that. Who does?

"A fucking kettle," she whispers to herself as she goes to grab the pen, only to flinch away when Eadala's vicious beak pecks at his fingers. "What's gotten into you?"

"What are you doing?!" He snaps angrily. "Do you have any idea what you're getting us into?"

"You heard the Captain. If we don't sign, we're out."

"Isn't 'out' what we wanted? What we decided?" His eyes glare daggers into her, and as much as Basira wants to hold his gaze, she ends up turning away first.

"That was before, Eadala."

"Before what?"

"Before finding out there's- there's _real_ things harming people out there, how can you not see that?!" 

"Didn't you believe the other things were real before?" His feathers poof out in indignation. "Didn't we use to think we'd clean out the streets and make everyone safe? Look at what you do."

"What's your point?"

"You're just looking for an excuse to continue," he snaps his beak again. "You said you didn't want to do this anymore."

"...You don't get it," she sighs. When she reaches for the pen again, extricating it from under her daemon's talons, he lets her. 

"No, I don't think I do."

* * *

_The new sectioned officer looks sharp._

_This is not to say their previous partner was an idiot, but this woman doesn't look like you can get anything past her, or that daemon of hers twisting his neck all around to look back at her when Daisy offers her hand for a shake._

_Given Daisy's... extracurricular activities, this is far from ideal._

_"It's okay," she tells Po later that night, as she boils water for pasta and goes over an interrogation tape on her laptop. "She probably won't last long anyways."_

_"I like them," Po says simply. "They feel like pack."_

_She gives him an unimpressed gaze, arching an eyebrow at him. "You really should've settled as a wolf if you wanted to say that."_

_"I didn't need to." Po goes to sit by her side, his claws clattering on the wooden floors of her flat. "You already were one."_

_Maybe it_ **_is_ ** _fitting that Polemos is a dog. She's their wild side, he's their discipline, their loyalty to the force. Domesticated enough that their prey don't expect the bite._

_Daisy smiles, and runs her finger down the soft fur of his neck before she presses play on the interrogation tape._

_The man sitting cuffed to the table says nothing, doesn't even move, but the officer 'interrogating' him nods along and asks follow-up questions like she's listening to a thrilling tale._

_There is only one daemon in the interrogation room_.

* * *

"Are you okay?" Daisy asks as she pulls the key from the ignition. Her voice has a careful quality to it, soft to her where it's harsh towards their suspects. Polemos stretches from the back seat, trying to touch Eadala with the tip of his wet nose, but he poofs his feathers and sticks his head under his wing.

Basira nods. This was not their worst case by far, but the dead woman's open mouth, with the spiders crawling in and out of their cozy home, will stay in her mind for a while. Forensics can call it post-mortem spasms all they like, but she's never met a corpse whose eyes follow you across the room. 

"I am. You?" 

"Got good partners." Daisy shrugs. She gives Basira another of her inscrutable, intense gazes, before she turns to open the door. "I'll go get started with the paperwork. Take a break."

And she's gone, leaving Basira and Eadala alone in the still, quiet car.

"You like her," Eadala says. There's no accusation to his voice, but also no doubt.

"You don't," Basira throws back. Not really an answer, but then again it wasn't really a question. "She's a good partner," she adds.

Not 'a good cop' or 'a good person'. She's not a fool.

"There was blood under her nails," Eadala says.

Basira keeps her gaze focused forward, her hands white-knuckled on the fabric of her pants. 

"Could be anything. Scratched a scab, maybe." She doesn't look at her daemon, she can't bear his gaze right now. Is this how suspects feel when she interrogates them?

"...Maybe." 

* * *

_She doesn't even_ **_want_ ** _to kill Sims by the time he's finished digging the hole she'll put him in. She seldom does, no matter how monstrous the things she hunts are. Somehow catching up to them always feels... disappointing. Like they should've kept running forever and ever, with Daisy hounding their every step._

_Still, just like every other that came before him, Sims is a monster and he will end as such. She rests her gun's muzzle to the back of his head, and something almost like guilt stirs in her stomach when she feels just how much he's trembling._

_"Stay still," she says, then changes her mind. A little weakness, just this once. "You can grab your daemon if you want."_

_He does, immediately. The little black cat digs their claws in his shirt, and stretches up to rub their chin against his, over and over again._

_"It's okay, Jon," they whisper. "We're okay. Close your eyes, we'll be fine."_

_"Do it," Po says when she takes too long to lift the gun again. "One less monster. We're saving people."_

_They are, they really are. Daisy rests her finger on the trigger._

_"-something else. Remember- remember when we went to the library for our birthday?" the daemon is saying now, still running their chin against their human's face. "When we were ten, remember?"_

_This is the worst part, she thinks. Her victims' daemons -when they have them at all- rarely talk to them. She's seen all sorts, the ones that feel like a shadow of a real daemon, the ones that look like uncanny taxidermy, the ones that smell like burnt fur and sulfur, none of them has ever tried to console their human._

_Sims nods, but he doesn't respond or open his eyes. Daisy's finger tenses-_

_"Daisy." And freezes at Eadala's voice. Basira's daemon lands on a nearby branch just a few seconds before she steps from between the trees, and Daisy knows her shot is gone. This is not something she wants Basira to witness, she's covered for so much already._

_"Lucky little freak." She sighs, before clicking the safety on again._

_She thinks she sees a tear run down the man's face, and she turns to Basira with something like guilt in her stomach again._

* * *

Basira isn't stupid.

She knows this isn't _just_ a contract, not in this place full of nightmares she can only glimpse at out the corner of her eye. It could _never_ be just a contract.

Still, this is to save Daisy and Po whose hands are still clenched tight around the gun, who has Elias' limp daemon held between his teeth, and who Basira has no doubt will end up killing the bastard and winning themselves a trip to jail.

It doesn't escape her attention that Eadala pushes the pen towards her this time.

Justice is blind, isn't that the saying? Maybe Basira never stood a chance.

* * *

_"Be quick about it," Daisy snarls as she wipes the thick, dark liquid -it's not blood, is it? Not when it came from a creature with no pulse, with a smile stretched too wide over a too-smooth face- off of her hands. Po still has the creature's mouse daemon grasped in his teeth, where it tilts its head and squeaks every couple seconds like a wind-up toy._

_"I'm- I'll- it'll just be a moment," Sims stutters before squeezing himself under the slightly lifted curtain door of the old storage unit._

_"I hate this," Po says before tearing the mouse daemon's head off with a twist of his snout. It dissolves in a rain of golden dust that fades from sight long before reaching its -not- human's body on the ground. "We're just- we're his hunting dogs."_

_"Worse." Daisy shrugs. "His little freak's guard dogs."_

_"It has to count for something though, doesn't it?" Po moves to sit beside her. "We're still killing monsters. Even if we're working for one."_

_"We just need to find a way to get Basira and Eadala out," Daisy agrees with a nod. "And then the whole place is free game."_

_There's a spark of excitement in her chest at the thought, like she can already savor Bouchard's fear as he tries fruitlessly to stay one step ahead of her, as he grows exhausted and slow, as he understands that his biggest mistake was thinking he could put them on a leash._

_"I'm- it's done. I'm ready to go." Sims is back now, with his skinny cat daemon hanging off at his shoulder and holding a thick leather-bound book to his chest._

_"What's that?" she asks, arching an eyebrow. What's in a book that could be important enough to risk sending Elias' prized archivist out?_

_His daemon's green eye flashes oddly against the headlights of a passing car._

_"It's- this is Adelard Dekker's journal," Sims says. "If there's any record of what Gertrude was planning to stop the Unknowing, it will be here."_

* * *

There are claws tearing at her wrist, her shirt, her headscarf, trying to pull her away from- from what?

Her friends? She doesn't have any of those. Daisy? Who is that?

Who is she?

All around her there are figures that laugh and dance, to something that isn't music but isn't noise either. Where is the exit? Is there one?

There has to be one, because she's here, and if she is here, then here is a place. And all places have an exit, she just... she needs to find that exit, whoever she is.

There's a pull at her chest all of a sudden, painful and _terrible_ , like her insides were being torn out only a thousand times worse. 

She screams and thrashes, nothing eases the pull except for moving towards it, batting away at the figures that ask her to stay and join in the dance with them.

It feels like an eternity before the sun hits in her eyes, and she sees a bird on the pavement before her, spread out like it just fell from the sky. 

"Ma'am? Are you okay?" someone asks. It is a figure, but it isn't dancing, so she doesn't know if they're real or not. 

Still, she nods. She doesn't know who she is, she might be Okay.

"Is- do you need help? Is your daemon okay?" The person gestures to the fallen bird, and she matches its sharp talons to the bleeding gashes on her wrist and cheek. 

"He's okay. You should- you should get out of here. Away. Far." Forming thoughts is still difficult, Basira still hears the song calling for her. She doesn't wait from a reply from the stranger, before grabbing her fallen daemon and limping away. "You. You pulled me out."

"I don't know who you are," the bird says, and she doesn't either, but holding him close to her chest feels right. "But I knew I had to stay with you. They- they wanted to take me from you."

"We-" 

**_BOOM_ **

The entire street shakes around them, and they look up towards the building just in time to see the roof cave in.

"...Oh," Basira -that's it, right? That's her, it has to be- breathes out. "...Daisy."

The owl doesn't respond, but he hides his head under a wing and she thinks he too is feeling the terrible, burning certainty that they just lost part of themselves.

* * *

_She can't see Po._

_Daisy feels him perfectly, the Buried keeps them apart just far enough that their bond is stretched thin to the point of agony, but not enough to break, which she figures is because intercision might actually kill her, and this place won't give her that._

_"Can- Po? Can you hear me?" She asks at times, and her mouth fills with dirt and rocks, threatening -but never delivering- to choke her._

_Whatever her soul responds is too far to hear._

* * *

"You're getting very chummy with him," Basira mutters. "We don't really know anything about him."

"We know plenty about him," Martin answers curtly, arranging the wilting flowers between Jon and Tim's beds with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. "He was Gertrude's assistant, what do you want, his biography?"

"The only things we have to go on are a bunch of statements, and his word. Isn't it awfully convenient that he happened to come back on the exact day of the Unknowing? He could be dangerous."

Martin's mouse daemon peeks out from his messy curls, his beady black eyes fixed on her. "That didn't stop you from trusting Daisy."

Eadala's talons tighten on her shoulder, and Basira knows the only reason he isn't gliding across the room to catch the other daemon and give him a good scare is the possibility of accidentally touching Martin.

"Votem, please," Martin sighs, and he reaches up to grab his daemon and place him among the flowers, where he angrily chews on a tulip. Martin for his part, turns to her with exhaustion in his eyes. "So what do you want, Basira? Should I tell him to go away? Because we're not exactly in the best position to be refusing help."

"Just- be careful, I guess." She's seen how the newcomer looks at Martin, and she knows how blind she got for someone who gave her the same look.

* * *

_Say what you will about the Buried, it at least gives you time to think between the bursts of agonizing terror._

_There's no one to chase here but her conscience, which is proving much harder to hunt down than any monster Daisy ever killed._

_And speaking of, wonders the woman who's lost her soul, how many of those really_ **_were_ ** _monsters?_

_She always did think she was chasing the foxes away from the coop, but how many of her victims were really just humans whose fear the Hunt latched on to?_

_How many of them did she kill because she_ **_wanted_ ** _to believe they were dangerous?_

_At least she can't hurt anyone here, innocent or not. Delighting in having the choice taken away from her might be cowardly, but Daisy no longer trusts herself to make it._

* * *

"-pposed to believe you don't know what Martin is doing after you've been-"

"Been _what_?" Gerry cuts into Jon's rant, leaning over him in a way that would look very menacing, Basira thinks, if his daemon wasn't nosing at Toris' side under the desk in a manner that looks almost curious. 

"Been _close_ to Martin these past few months. One would expect you would _at least_ know why he's pushing us all away."

"One would also expect an avatar of the Eye to _at least_ know things, especially when you've known the person for over three years, but I guess we're both disappointed here, Jon."

Basira rolls her eyes when Jon's daemon swipes at Boni's face, not quite an attack but not a friendly gesture either. These two need to figure out if they really feel that antagonistic towards the other, or if they're just jealous of each other.

* * *

_What was her daemon's name?_

_What did he look like?_

_Was he made for hunting and hurting and killing, just like her?_

_"I don't remember you," she says around a mouthful of dirt and rocks and tears._

_As always, there is no response._

* * *

"I don't know you" Sasha says with utmost certainty as soon as she crosses the threshold. "You came after I was taken. You're... They said your name but- I forget."

Basira arches an eyebrow. "It's alright. Basira. And Eadala." She gestures to her daemon. "You're getting better."

"She's working hard," Tim says from his place sitting on top of Martin's old desk. Sasha's bright-coloured daemon rests on his hair like a clip, fanning his wings open and closed. "Have you seen Melanie?"

"I know Melanie. She- the ghosts. She wanted the library. That's before I was taken." Sasha looks down at Tim's daemon, who's curled by her feet. "Right?"

"Angry, small," Agni smiles up at her, and Sasha grins and scratches behind her ears.

"That's Jon too though," Sasha chuckles. Tim snorts; Basira has to look away at the absolutely _taken_ look in his eyes. 

"I just dropped her at the hospital. Thought she might need some stitches for the scalpel wound." 

"Sounds like a fun night. Glad I missed it." Tim closes his eyes when Sasha's daemon starts walking over his face, until he comes to rest at his nose. "Didn't you say Jon got stabbed too?"

Basira shrugs. "I haven't seen how bad his is, but it can't have been clean."

"It wasn't, but he's nothing if not a hard headed _mule_ , your archivist." Gerry's arrival is only preceded by the sound of his heavy boots, and Boni's nails clattering on the hardwood floor. "He won't even let me look at it, I don't know how Martin deals with him."

"He has the patience of a saint," Tim agrees before gently touching Sasha's shoulder. "What about him?"

"I knew _of_ him. In- in the statements." She frowns. "Fire and books and eyes. Jon- Jon liked it when he came up- oh."

Basira rolls her eyes as the door to the Archives slams shut again, and the sound of heavy boots and clattering nails grows fainter in the distance.

* * *

_Daisy reaches out more out of habit than any real hope of finding anything to grab on._

_"Are you real?" She asks the hand that wraps itself tightly around hers._

_"I'm- Daisy it's- it's me, Jon!"_

_"Jon." The name brings a hint of guilt to her stomach, the sight of a tear slipping into a daemon's lustrous black fur. "What are you doing here?"_

_"I'm- we came to get you out."_

_"...I'm dangerous out there," Daisy says. The confession weighs heavy on her tongue, but she knows it to be true. No matter how terrible it is here, the possibility of being back to what she was before is much worse. "I think it's better if I stay."_

_Jon stays quiet for a moment that feels so long Daisy squeezes at his hand a little, just to make sure he hasn't disappeared like her soul did._

_"Then- then I'm staying with you," he says. "Until you want to come out."_

* * *

Eadala flies ahead of her, far and fast enough to stretch their bond even as Basira races down the corridor to the little storage room behind Jon's office. 

He's back. 

And if he's back -she _wants_ him to be back, doesn't she?- then maybe- maybe he can tell her what happened to Daisy. Maybe he can-

Toris is climbing out of the open coffin, slipping on the scattered tapes on the floor as they drag something out with them.

The dishevelled ball of ruffled tawny feathers doesn't look like anything Basira can recognize, but Eadala dives straight at it, crashing in a mess of feathers and grunts and-

"Po?" Basira asks, her voice strangely squeaky. "I- Po is that you?"

It can't be, because Polemos is a large, imposing doberman, not some sort of-

"Basira-" the bird daemon lifts his head, and his shiny dark eyes are the same Basira remembers, harsh for everyone, but never for her. "I'm- we changed. I'm sorry."

Eadala has his wings spread over Po's slighter form, glaring up at her like he's daringher to disappoint Po, but all Basira can think of is Sasha's daemon crawling comfortably all over Tim, and how much she wishes she could just grab the bird in her arms.

"I'm- it's okay. We- we should've changed before," Basira forces through a dry throat. "Po, where's-"

She jumps about a foot in the air, when Jon's hand grips at the edge of the coffin, before the rest of him emerges. His face looks gaunt and ashen, his frame a lot skinnier than when he left just three days ago and hanging by his other hand...

"Oh my god." Basira goes to pull Daisy out -she's so _light_ , and her grip on Basira's shoulders is so _weak-_ just as her ears registers the sound of heavy boots against wood. Out the corner of her eye, she sees Toris being tackled to the ground by a large black shadow, but she's too busy to pay them any mind, too focused on-

"Basira-" Daisy whispers against her shoulder. "I'm- I'm back."

* * *

_Basira and Jon go up North, and Daisy watches them leave._

_Po flutters around with Eadala, the tips of their wings barely grazing each other, until Eadala has to go back to Basira on the boat._

_"They'll be fine," says the man with the tattoos and the black dog daemon. Basira said they could trust them, so Daisy does, but she can still tell he's not entirely sure of what he's saying. "They'll be back soon, you'll see."_

_"Why are they going alone again?" Daisy asks._

_"We wouldn't be of much help, would we?" He asks. "A hunter that won't hunt, and a watcher that won't watch."_

_"Is that what we are?" Daisy asks. She doesn't feel like much of a hunter anymore, despite Po's sharp-beaked form._

_"It's what we were meant to be. But we chose something different." The man glances subtly at her. "That counts."_

_Nearly a month later finds her back at the piers with Gerry. She feels a lot more human now, a lot more her, whoever that is._

_The knot in her chest loosens a little when she sees Basira and Jon standing at the deck of the ship, both in two pieces, both safe._

_She hears Gerry exhale slowly beside her, and she knows she wasn't the only one that doubted they'd be back._

* * *

"They need us. They- they need help," Daisy says. Basira can hear the slight shake in her voice, hear Po's anxious cawing from where he's perched on a bookshelf. 

They're afraid of the Hunt waking up again, Basira knows, afraid that if it comes back, they won't. 

"You don't have to go," Basira says immediately, without even processing the words. 

Behind them, Tim is having limited success holding Jon and Gerry from storming into the tunnels. Through Eadala's eyes she can see the tiny ball of fur held carefully in Jon's cupped hands, and she wonders whether it will be harder to live without Daisy, or knowing she let a good man die to keep her. 

"I- I do." Daisy takes a deep breath before she stands up from the cot, and when Po comes to perch at her shoulder his claws grip so tight her skin goes white underneath. Daisy's eyes are no longer looking at her; when she turns, Basira finds that she's focused on Jon. "I'll help."

"Daisy-"

"We can help." They all whip around at the new voice; it's still somewhat of a rarity to hear Sasha speak without being prompted. "We- your plan. From the Unknowing." Her eyes flash a dangerous green, like the Eye in her is rebelling against even remembering the Stranger. 

"Sasha?" Jon asks, his face pinched with stress but his eyes alight with surprise, with the curiosity that -Basira thinks- was what got him into this mess in the first place.

"I think... I think the Archives could use some decluttering." When Sasha turns to her and Daisy, it's like she's a different woman altogether. There's something mischievous in her gaze, a determined curve to her tightly pressed lips. This is the woman whose death broke this team, Basira thinks. "I'm going to need some extra hands. How fast are you with a lighter?"

"I... Yes. We can do that. I can do that, Basira says, still a bit confused by how fast things are moving. She didn't plan for any of this, how could she?

Tim lays a hand on her forearm, and his deep dark eyes are full of determination. This is not the same man who left for the Unknowing without a thing to live for.

"Stay safe. Keep them safe."

Basira catches the end of Daisy's quiet, relieved sigh, and nods.

"With my life."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Mentions of corruption in the police: Basira is about to leave the force when she gets sectioned, because of the corruption in it.  
> Canon typical Hunt induced murderous thoughts: Daisy hunts and kills other avatars (some are implied to be "regular" humans that the Hunt made her think were avatars so she'd go after them)  
> Murder attempt: Daisy takes Jon to the woods to execute him and makes him dig a grave for himself. He gets comforted by his daemon during what they believe are their last moments.  
> Dissociation: For lack of a better word. Basira becomes disconnected from her sense of self during the Unknowing.  
> Claustrophobia & Suffocation: The Buried


	5. Martin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Abusive/neglectful parents  
> Depression  
> VERY vague reference to a trans character's deadname. The deadname is not mentioned or further referenced.  
> Canon-typical worms  
> Daemon body horror  
> Implied near-starvation  
> Manipulation  
> Dead parents  
> Suicidal ideation
> 
> See end notes for more information.

_ "Make him change," Mum snaps. "He's taking too much space." _

_ She never refers to Votem by name, but he knows what she means. She doesn't like it when Votem tries larger forms, she says it's disconsiderate towards other people. He doesn't understand too well, because he's seen other kids with deer or tiger or bear daemons at the bus and at school and the park, and no one ever seems to have any problem with them. _

_ Still, it's one of the few times Mum actually talks to them, so they always comply. _

_ Mum is- she's very busy. _

_ It's why she doesn't have much time to pack his lunch, and why she always walks so fast that he has to run to keep up with her. She just has a lot of things to do, and he's very slow. _

_ It's not her fault, it's just how he is, and he's got to try harder. _

* * *

Votem settles just a few days after he turns sixteen, which means he can  _ finally _ change his name.

"I think- I think I'm going to keep Martin," he says. It looks right written down, and it sounds well in his mouth. "Martin K. Blackwood."

"What's the K stand for?" Votem asks, pushing his little hand on the ink pad to press a paw print next to his signatures on the deed poll.

"I- nothing. Not yet." The name he had before -the one that wasn't his- started with a K. It feels important to Martin, to keep at least a piece of the only thing his mother gave him willingly.

"It's okay. We can find out later." Votem wipes the ink off his paw on a tissue, before he hopes into Martin's hand. He fits perfectly in his palm, just a little ball of reddish-brown and white fur, his long whiskers twitching lightly as he looks up at Martin with his beady black eyes.

It's a soul that doesn't take up much space, as if trying to compensate for how big Martin is.

Small and insignificant, but his at least. 

* * *

_ "I don't like that man," Votem whispers in his ear as they walk out of the Institute with their brand new schedule in hand. "I didn't like how he looked at you." _

_ Martin takes in a deep, shaky breath, stopping to watch the river in an attempt to try and calm himself. "Do you think he knew?" _

_ That is all that matters, did he know somehow that Martin was lying? That he isn't worth the paper he printed his handful of lies onto?  _

_ They need this job. No other place will take them; Martin is good at lying, but there's just no space for them, and mum's meds are expensive.  _

_ "I- Martin, I don't care if he knew. There's something wrong with that man," Votem insists, climbing down his sweater to sit on the back of his hand. "We should find somewhere else." _

_ "There is nowhere else, Votem." Martin sighs. "Besides... we already signed the contract. Let's give it a few weeks at least." _

* * *

Sasha chuckles into her coffee cup, the steam fogging up her glasses. "Yeah, Elias gave me creep vibes too when I first met him. Still does, sorta. But hey, he's easy enough to avoid."

"He is, I suppose." Martin smiles. "I guess I was mostly worried that he knew about my CV and hired me just as a sick joke or something."

"I mean, maybe. But you're  _ scarily _ capable, Martin, credentials or not. There's a reason he didn't kick you out." Sasha looks at him with a fond smile, and Martin can  _ almost _ believe her. "Oh! Look at them!"

Down at the table Sasha's Calliope has landed on Votem's back, and he looks like something out of a children's fairytale book, a little fairy mouse with two bright butterfly wings coming up behind his back. 

"Don't be fooled by the sight." Martin smiles. "He's ruthless."

"Oh, I've heard some of the things he whispers when Jon is being a prick." Sasha gives him a mischievous smile, and then breaks down into full-on laughter at Martin's reddening face.

It feels like a good laugh, Martin decides. He could very much get used to having friends.

* * *

_ She's at the door. _

_ She's been there for days now, standing before his door like she can see him through the peephole. _

_ Her daemon is an ermine draped over her shoulder, limp and immobile except when it twitches abruptly, with white maggots crawling out of his empty eye-sockets, his ears, his mouth, the holes in his reddish fur that must have looked lustrous and elegant at some point, like her ragged red nightdress. _

_ "We're going to die here," he whispers, holding his own daemon -free of maggots every time he checks- close to his chest. They're going to die, and all because they were so desperate to get approval from a man who finds them mediocre at most. "She's going to kill us." _

_ "She's not. We- we just have to wait. We're strong, Martin, we can do this. We just need to stay calm." _

_ Martin sighs, nods, and reaches for the tin of canned peaches that's the only thing left in his pantry. _

* * *

He takes a long, deep breath after he finishes his tale, looking at the dead worms he slammed down on Jon's desk. The shame and regret start flooding in almost immediately, what was he  _ thinking _ , yelling at Jon -at his  _ boss _ \- like that?!

"So? Is this where you tell us we were just having an extremely vivid hallucination?" Votem asks dryly. 

"Votem-"

"No," Jon sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I- whatever Prentiss does... I don't know exactly how, but it's real. I- I believe you, and- you were lucky to escape with your life."

"Martin." Jon's daemon hops up on the desk silently, and it takes Martin a few seconds to connect the voice with their presence. He's never actually heard Toris speak, and they sound... softer than he expected, somehow. Like all the feelings Jon tries to pretend he doesn't have were compressed into them instead. "I apologise if we made you believe you needed to put yourself at risk. That was not our intention, and- and that isn't how it should be."

Jon doesn't meet his eyes, and Toris doesn't avert theirs. Martin feels like someone slapped him, dazed and lost as he looks at the cat daemon staring up at him.

An apology straight from Jon's soul feels a lot bigger than anything the man himself could say.

"I’m- thank you." Martin nods his head. Toris blinks once, slow and long, leaving their eyes closed for a couple seconds. "I just- I'm trying, Jon. I know you didn't want me on your team, but-"

"I should- I'm sorry about that too," Jon's words cut into his. He's still not looking at Martin, and his lips are pursed together into what Martin would call a pout on anyone else. "That was... it was unfair of me. I don't- you're very capable, Martin. I just-" he clears his throat like he's going to say something else, but then he doesn't. 

Martin looks at him for a moment; his cheeks look slightly darker, but with his brown skin it's difficult to gauge the change. Toris is a much clearer indicator of his mood, their tail whipping back and forth, and their ears pushed flat against their head.

"I'll just go-"

"Do you have a place to stay?" Jon interrupts him again, and he  _ finally _ looks at him. "Somewhere safe?"

He wants to say he does, because while going back to mum's flat for a couple nights isn't something he's eager for, it's a safe place, and he doesn't want to inconvenience-

"Not really," Votem pipes in, hopping down to Martin's shoulder and sliding down his arm to the desk, where he sits on his back legs, looking up at Jon. "Are you offering?"

"I'm- my flat doesn't really- it's not set up for visitors," Jon stutters out. Martin is  _ mortified _ , his soul has always been a smartass and way too outspoken, but this is too much even for him. 

"Don't mind him!" Martin swipes Votem off the desk and shoves him into his jacket pocket. "We'll find a place, there's- we'll figure it out."

"A- actually... There's a room down here. I- it's not big at all, but I managed to fit a cot in it, for when Toris and I are working late." Jon averts his face again, like this is some dirty little secret, staying back to work some more. "It's supposed to be weather regulated, and it and well- the door basically seals shut. You could- if you want to stay there, I- that would be okay."

"...Oh. I- thank you, Jon."

"Least I could do, I believe." Jon gives him a sheepish little smile.

Votem curls up with a squeak inside Martin's jacket pocket.

* * *

_ "Sasha's dead, Martin. Jon fucking got her too, deal with it," Tim growls, and something inside Martin snaps. _

_ It's not just seeing Agni -sweet, friendly Agni with her warm amber eyes and her wagging tail- bare her teeth, but also the words themselves. Tim's fierce accusation of a man he used to love, the callous dismissal of Sasha's demise, like he doesn't care, like he never did.  _

_ "Would you stop with your bullshit?" Martin bites back. It doesn't escape his attention that Tim's eyes go to the top of his head first, like he's expecting to find Votem glaring at him after speaking. Surprise surprise, Martin has a backbone too, not just his soul. "I want you to look at me and tell me you  _ **_honestly_ ** _ believe Jon would've hurt Sasha." _

_ Tim holds his gaze for about half a minute, before he averts his eyes. "It's what she said. The policewoman," he grumbles. "And you know how he got in the end." _

_ "I also know we saw something that wasn't Sasha. Doesn't sound like something Jon could've done." He remembers her stretched out limbs, the off, too-long face with too many teeth and too few eyes, and the visceral, gut-wrenching terror that gripped his insides even as his mind whispered Sasha's name. The way she sweetly sing-sang Jon's name as she prowled the tunnels, before he and Tim were swept up into the yellow door by the man with the monkey daemon. "It wasn't him, Tim. He didn't kill that man, he didn't kill Gertrude, and he didn't kill Sasha." _

_ "It doesn't matter anymore," Tim mutters.  _

_ It occurs to Martin then that perhaps Jon did kill something, in the end. _

* * *

Adelard Dekker's journals are written with a steady, calm hand. It's an interesting offset to the things they talk about, a list of fourteen names describing the terrors that have been plaguing them for years. 

_ 'Gertrude's boy describes them as colors. Bleeding into each other, different hues, but all part of a spectrum of light. I think there's some credit to that idea, he's always been a smart one _ ,' a passage reads.  _ 'How easy would it be to start fearing the Spiral, suspecting your own senses of not perceiving reality as it is, and then running into something truly unknown, a Stranger that uses that disorientation to wear the face of a friend? Does fearing the Eye's watchfulness not put you on just the right path to suspect you're being manipulated, like a fly neatly delivered to the Spider's net? _ '

"I didn't know Gertrude had kids." Martin runs a finger carefully over the hand-printed words.

"She didn't," Jon whispers. They've been spending a lot of time together lately, doing research whenever Jon isn't away.

Votem sometimes remarks dryly on their little study dates, but Martin knows there's no fire behind it just from the way his feisty little soul hides in his hair or dives into his pockets whenever they're in Jon and Toris' presence.

"That's better, I think." Martin shrugs. "I wouldn't want any of her loved ones to find out how she ended."

"Alone and afraid under the Institute?"

Martin smiles. "I didn't know Gertrude, but something tells me she wasn't really afraid, you know?"

* * *

_ They have a plan. _

_ ' _ **_I need him to be okay._ ** _ ' _

_ It's a good plan. Martin runs the lighter's flame along the edge of a statement while Votem chews clean through a second one. Elias bangs on the door, enraged. Sorry Elias, can't help you, got some more statements to burn. Fill in your complaints with the Head Archivist, if he comes back. _

**_When_ ** _ he comes back. _

_ They have to, both of them. Martin already lost Sasha, he can't just lose the rest of his family like this.  _

_ He'll burn the Archives to the ground if it's what it takes, but they  _ **_have_ ** _ to come back. _

* * *

"I'm sorry." Gerard's voice breaks the still, stuffy silence of the hospital room. "They... I know they were your friends."

Friends. Is that what they were? With Tim spitting poison at every turn? With Jon so afraid for his life that they're all dangerous in his eyes, first because he feared them, then because he feared losing them?

"I don't know what we were," Martin sighs. He reaches out to grab Jon's limp hand, but stops short of actually touching it. 

"…I know the feeling," Gerard sighs too. It sounds about as exhausted as Martin feels. His daemon lets out a loud, long whine as she rests her head on his lap, and he lays a hand between her ears.

Martin feels the corners of his mouth tilting the slightest bit upwards at the picture they paint.

"You know? The statement givers talked a lot about her. They said she was 'intimidating', but she doesn't look too bad to me." He still remembers the early days, the gleam of intrigue in Jon's eyes every time they found another statement about the man with the terrible hair and the beautiful, terrifying soul. "What's her name? Bonitatem?"

Gerard grimaces a little at that. "Don't- we prefer Boni, actually. I always wanted my friends to call her that."

Martin recognizes the feeling in the man's eyes immediately. The kind of loneliness he sees everyday in the mirror. 

"Oh. Nice to meet you, Boni," he says. She doesn't say anything, but her ears twitch, and Martin hears a tail thudding against the floor somewhere beyond his sight. It brings another smile to his face. 

"What about you?" Votem asks, swinging down on a lock of Martin's hair to drop at his shoulder, where he looks at the man expectantly.

"I'm- uh- Gerry's fine," he says after a pause. 

Martin snorts and shakes his head when his daemon gives his hair a little tug to urge him on.

"Nice to meet you, Gerry." 

* * *

_ Are you in love?  _

_ You thought you were in love before.  _

_ What would hurt the most? To find out that what you felt for Jon back then was a lie, or that it was true, and it's an omen of what's to come for the soft, warm feeling that's started to flutter like a newborn bird inside your heart? _

_ Gerry Delano is a mystery and a half. You see in his eyes the same sadness you can't extricate from yours, and the way it evaporates when he sees you -like fog, like a bad dream- makes you feel important.  _

_ Your soul rides on his -Bonitatem, Boni; you googled the name once, and you find that Kindness suits Gerry like a glove- whenever you're together, and it makes you feel safe but more than anything it makes you feel powerful, because you see the same feeling mirrored in his eyes. _

_ Wouldn't it be poetic, for two broken men to make a whole? _

_ Are you in love? _

_ Or do you just want to feel something that isn't fear? _

* * *

"I think it fits him. Being a mouse I mean." Gerry plucks another petal from the wilting rose he snatched off of Jon's room.

"Easy to overlook?" Martin asks. They're sitting by the river, people-watching before they have to go back to the Institute. 

Or rather, they're  _ supposed _ to be people-watching. Martin is looking at Gerry and the daemons instead, Votem sitting on Boni's head and stretching his little hands to receive the petals as Gerry holds them out.

Gerry rolls his eyes. "Is that how you see it?"

Martin shrugs. He's long since grown used to his soul's form, so it's not a particularly sore topic for him, and Tim and Sasha had gotten just as riled up when he joked about it to them.

"Always scared?" Martin grins at the annoyance in Gerry's face. 

"Have you  _ met _ Boni?" Gerry asks dryly.

"Yes, I think she's adorable, thank you." Martin smiles fondly at the dog daemon, who wags her tail at him. Complimenting her has the added effect of Gerry going a bit pink in the face, which is also great. "Pests!"

"Stop that," Gerry huffs.

"He's messing with you," Votem says at the same time, through a mouthful of petal.

"I know he is," Gerry arches a pierced eyebrow. "I still don't like it."

"Hmmmmm..." Martin can't hold back the snort as he pretends to think. It's not like there's a shortage of unflattering things to say about people with mice daemons. "Filth-!"

He isn't quite prepared for Gerry to surge up and catch his lips in a kiss.

But it is.

A nice surprise.

* * *

_ "All I'm saying is you've gotten quite the roster of people you can't afford to lose, haven't you Martin?" Lukas' voice sounds like the opposite of one, like talking to silence, and having silence talk back. "Why, with Sasha's return, the only one you're missing is your Jon, isn't it? Then your little ragtag family is back together. It would be a shame if we had another incident, if you ask me." _

_ "If I say yes-" Martin straightens to his full height and looks at the man in the eye. His polar bear daemon looms behind him, her fangs only an inch from Martin's ear, and still Votem stands tall on the crown of his head, looking defiantly back at her. "You guarantee they'll be safe?" _

_ "Of course." Lukas smiles. It's cold, and it -unsurprisingly- doesn't reach his eyes. He offers a hand, and some of his daemon's drool splatters down on Martin's shoulder. "Do we have a deal, then?"  _

_ Martin is under no illusions regarding his own safety -or even his own survival- when he shakes Lukas' hand, but he knows one thing for sure.  _

_ Out of the two of them, he's not the one going into this deal underestimating the other party, and this will not be the first time Martin uses that to win the war. _

* * *

"Look at  _ that _ ," Votem whispers into his ear as they walk. Martin rolls his eyes at the tone -one Votem hasn't used since they were in college and saw a pretty boy at the mall- but looks up anyways, just in time to see the gorgeous man leaving the hospital.

His skin and eyes are dark, his hair a deep brown in carefully arranged curls and sporting neatly trimmed stubble that leads straight up to his high cheekbones. He's wearing a  _ wonderfully _ tailored suit, and his raven daemon perched on his shoulder gives him the appearance of something that came out of a gothic photoshoot or Martin's teenage dreams.

It's only when the man passes by his side that Martin realizes his daemon has no face, just a bare skull and a skeletal beak nested among the dark feathers.

"I- did you see that?" Martin whispers.

Votem's grip on his ear tightens, and he can hear his tiny heart beating so fast it's barely more than a buzz.

"Martin?" A hand lands on his shoulder, and Martin flinches so abruptly that Georgie takes a step back. "Hey, it's- it's just me."

"O- oh, hi. I was just-"

"Watching the dead guy?" She asks, and Martin notices her daemon's tail is poofed up to thrice its usual size. He remembers quite suddenly that Jon mentioned Memento wasn't always silent, and his fur wasn't always white.

"I- yes." He clears his throat. "I'm- Georgie are you alright?"

"I was coming out to call you actually, you know there's no signal in there." She tilts her head towards the building, before crossing her arms over her chest. 

"Yes? What happen-"

"I think he woke Jon up."

* * *

_ "Is this really what you want?" Gerry asks quietly.  _

_ Martin disentangles his hand from his -slowly, softly- and takes a step back.  _

_ "I want you all to be safe. To have some protection." _

_ "...Martin I think we would rather have you." _

_ "I'm sorry." Martin averts his gaze from Gerry's, and ends up meeting Boni's mournful eyes.  _

_ "Are you really?" she asks. _

_ Martin tries to say yes for a very long moment, before he turns around to leave. _

* * *

It hurts a little -it hurts a lot- to see the team thriving without him.

Sure, Martin is... he's aware he's the only reason they're safe, that in exchange for his humanity Peter's fog blankets the Institute and any who would breach it end up wandering into a very different place. 

Is it selfish to  _ want _ them to miss him? To want them to reach out and try to save him from this fate he chose to save  _ them _ ?

They start forgetting him a few months after Jon comes back. They just- they have a lot of things to focus on right now, with Sasha, with Melanie, Daisy...

At some point Martin comes into the Archives surrounded by the fog, and finds Toris curled on Boni's belly, purring up a storm against the beat of her drumming tail. It's just as telling as Jon's hands fisted tight in Gerry's shirt, pulling him down for a kiss far more intense than Martin ever dared dream of. 

They've moved on, the two of them. It's- it's alright. Martin did this for them, didn't he? To give them all a chance.

It would be wrong to resent them for taking it.

* * *

_ "He'll be back soon," Gerry's voice comes from the other side of the closed office door. Martin hears Boni's claws scratch against the wood, like- well, like a dog asking to be let in. "It's- he'll be alright. Gertrude didn't seem to think the Dark was anything to be worried about." _

_ He curls in tighter on himself, and doesn't respond, just like he didn't respond when Jon came to say goodbye. _

_ "...Martin? How- how's Votem looking?" Gerry's voice sounds almost fragile with worry, and Martin is shocked enough by the question that he forgets to send them away again.  _

_ "We don't talk much anymore," he says. Truth is, he hasn't seen his soul in a while. He doesn't feel the pull of the bond, so he must be here somewhere, but he doesn't climb on him and hides in his hair anymore. Wherever he's hiding, he's out of Martin's way, and his absence is filled by the refreshing embrace of the fog. _

_ "Martin?"  _

_ "Please leave me alone, Gerry. I have work to do." _

_ "I'm- I- sure. I just figured you'd want to know why he hasn't been around." _

_ "I don't," he lies. _

* * *

The call comes from a number he doesn't recognize, just like the voice at the other side of the line.

It says his mother's name, asks if he knew her. 

The past tense surprises him a lot more than finding out he was not her emergency contact, that he was only contacted on accident, because her landlord remembered she used to have a son. 

"Is everything okay, Martin dear?" Peter's daemon steps out into the office in a burst of fog. Martin doesn't even flinch- Ina often wanders the institute alone, just like her human. It's more of a rarity to see them together, and Martin suspects they aren't really comfortable in each other's presence."You look a bit  _ grey _ there." And she chuckles to herself like she just made the best joke in existence.

"My mother died," Martin says, more to test the words in his mouth than to actually answer her question. 

"Oh no..." She smiles, all sharp fangs and cold amusement. "You poor thing, you must be devastated."

"...I don't think she ever loved me." He allows himself to say it now, months after Elias confirmed it. Back then he could still deny it with the hope that, well... maybe she  _ would _ start to love him at some point. He's not much for hope anymore. 

"And now she's gone. You're all alone..." 

"I... I suppose I am." He is, isn't he? Nobody's coming for him. Not Jon and not Gerry who have found each other, not Sasha who barely remembers herself, or Tim who has no mind for anything else. "Ina?"

"Hm?" 

"I think I'm ready. For whatever- whatever Peter and you are planning, I think." He's  _ exhausted _ , and so close to the end of it all that he can almost taste his rest.

Ina looks  _ delighted _ , giving him another one of her empty smiles. "You know? I think you're ready too."

"Can- I can leave a note, can't I? To say goodbye." At least this way they'll know he existed, even if they have forgotten him.

"Of course you can," she coos at him. "After all you've done for them, it's the least you deserve."

It is a bit telling that she isn't trying to keep him from writing to them. She knows they won't come just as surely as he does. 

His pen hovers over the paper for what feels like an eternity, as he wonders what to write. What do you say to the people you willingly walked out on? The ones you pushed to leave you?

_ 'Martin K. Blackwood' _ , he writes. He never did get to decide what the K stood for. He draws a little paw print at the end, because Votem is not around, hasn't been around in months, but the signature feels incomplete without it. 

And that's it, isn't it? Martin K. Blackwood, he existed for a while. 

And then he didn't.

* * *

_ When Peter steps into the office -Elias' office,  _ **_his_ ** _ office-, there's nothing much left to find. _

_ He can feel Ina's presence in the Lonely, leading Martin away. _

_ "Fancy seeing you here," Peter chuckles to himself as he steps up to the desk. The daemon's tiny chest rises and falls almost imperceptibly, and his beady black eyes are half-lidded with exhaustion. It's not unexpected, the Forsaken's influence is not dissimilar to intercision. "What have you got there?" _

_ He pulls the note free from under his limp, twitching body with a tug at its corner.  _

_ Martin K. Blackwood, reads the paper. A last cry for help, from a man that has forgotten what that is. _

_ "I don't think he will be needing this, do you?" Peter folds it neatly in half, before tucking it into the pocket of his coat. _

_ Votem's body is light and small, perfect to push around with the back of a pencil, and he tumbles easily enough into the first desk drawer. Martin's wallet, his keys, and his dying soul. An unremarkable coffin, for an unremarkable man.  _

_ The drawer closes, and Peter walks back into the Lonely with a new spring to his step. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Abusive/neglectful parents: From an early age, Martin's mother rarely speaks to him or his daemon. It is implied she doesn't feed him or watch him appropriately.  
> Depression: Martin's general mood for some parts of the chapter.  
> VERY vague reference to a trans character's deadname: It is mentioned that Martin's deadname started with the letter K. The deadname is NOT mentioned or further referenced.  
> Canon-typical worms: Self-explanatory.  
> Daemon body horror: Jane Prentiss' daemon is being eaten alive by maggots, to the point that he's pretty much just a sentient carcass now, and his only movement are nervous twitches.  
> Implied near-starvation: Martin runs out of food during Jane's siege at his apartment.  
> Manipulation: Peter Lukas manipulates Martin into aligning to the Lonely.  
> Dead parents: Martin's mother.  
> Suicidal ideation: After his mother's death, Martin accepts to go into the Lonely to complete Peter's plan for him, knowing (and wanting) that he won't come back out.


	6. Jonah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Narcissistic behavior  
> Manipulation  
> Unhealthy relationships  
> Mentioned murder
> 
> See end notes for more information (and also some explanation on the daemons).

Knowledge was much harder to come by in the 1800s, but Jonah has always relied on his patron. When the Eye came and whispered into his mind exactly _what_ his soul was, he took it as an invitation, a reward from his deity for his outstanding potential. 

"Did you know you could do that?" He asks, his voice the only ripple in the silence of his study. 

"We could be infinite, Jonah." Vigilia buzzes in his ear, the needle-like tip of her stinger dragging across his skin. 

* * *

"She really is beautiful, Jonah dear. And so  _ exotic _ !" Clara Von Closen leans in to peer closer at his daemon, and Jonah smiles in return. Vigilia sits at his throat like an emerald brooch on his stark white cravat. "What is she again?"

"A jewel wasp, dear," Jonah says. The other name is a lot less flattering. "They were only recently discovered, I'm quite lucky, could you imagine going your whole life without knowing what your daemon is?"

"It would be a shame," Albrecht adds, coming back from the liquor cabinet with three glasses of spirits. He doesn't notice -and neither does his wife- his little squirrel daemon scratching at the angry sting on her flank. "But knowing my Jonah like I do, I bet you would've discovered the species yourself!"

"Oh, careful when you say that, beloved." Clara's smile turns mischievous, delightful woman that she is. "You know Jonah here has dealings with dangerous people that would much rather not share him."

"Ah yes, that tremendous bore of a man." Albrecht rolls his eyes with an amused huff. His daemon has torn the skin on her flank, a thick rivulet of golden Dust running down her bright red fur. She's not paralyzed, but her movements are jerky enough that Jonah feels his lips curl in a smile. "I daresay, isn't it just ridiculous, to have your soul settle in such an inconvenient form? Lukas  _ must _ be compensating for something, am I mistaken, Jonah?"

"I'm afraid I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, Albrecht." Jonah grins again. 

* * *

_ Fiducia spasmed so badly on my shoulder (she's been doing that a lot, say, have you found anything across your many academic endeavors that implies daemons falling ill?) that she dropped all the way to the ground, I had to pick her up, and it was when I raised back to full height that I saw him.  _

_ It was the man from the cemetery, and he was completely, terrifyingly alone. Back in the crypt I thought his daemon was merely in hiding, or that I was too distracted to see them, but that frail illusion of safety was all but obliterated by the sight of him now. His wide brimmed hat was removed and he stared at me. His head was completely bald, and his eyes were missing. They were just empty sockets but they stared at me. They saw me. Believe or dismiss anything else in my letter as you wish Jonah, but I swear to you that I stood face to face with a man with no eyes and no daemon, and he saw me. _

* * *

"What is this?" Jonah asks, curiously eyeing the slip of paper on the desk as he readjusts his waistcoat. 

Barnabas rushes across the room to grab it, his daemon waddling after him in a manner that Jonah _always_ finds entirely too endearing, against his best judgement.

"My apologies, my dear. It was in terrible taste of me to leave this out in the open. Merely a loan I took from a mutual acquaintance." He goes to stash the check away, but Jonah can read the name on it through Vigilia's fractal eyes. 

"Did you borrow money from Mordechai Lukas, Barnabas?" He asks.

The man flinches at the accusation, and Dílis turns her beautiful all-black eyes to Jonah.

"I warned him not to, but he wouldn't listen," she says. Back in those days it's still rare for a daemon to talk so freely to another human, but those boundaries have long since blurred between them. "He was-"

"An idiot is what he was," Jonah huffs. "Honestly, Barnabas, have you  _ seen _ his daemon? There is a reason I asked you not to cross him."

"You never seem to have trouble in your dealings with him." Barnabas' voice is colder than it ever is towards him. "Or is that because you deal in a different currency?"

"How I conduct my business is none of yours, but this does explain why you suddenly lost all common sense, I suppose." Jonah shakes his head. Jealousy turns the brave reckless.

It's his own fault, he muses as he watches Vigilia land on Dílis' smooth silvery fur, a bright green spot among a sea of black ones. They have tried stinging her before, but the stinger just won't penetrate the seal daemon's blubber. The way they found of binding the pair to themselves is just as effective, but a lot more troublesome. 

"I will be fine." Barnabas comes to rest against his side. On his lips is the youthful, cheeky grin that Jonah hates, because it makes something in him feel  _ human _ . "And if I'm not, I trust you will come to my aid."

* * *

_ I see Mordechai's beast lurking in the fog, and I know she's waiting for me to give up, to collapse. Dílis doesn't talk anymore, doesn't move. I have to carry her around this... this place he has put me in, but it no longer feels like I'm holding my daemon. At times I wonder if I just dropped her and went on my way, would I even feel the pull? _

_ Please, Jonah, if you have any compassion within your heart, you will not leave me in this place _ .

* * *

"I'm just saying, you were incredibly fond of the man, yet you don't seem at all phased by his disappearance?" Jonathan crosses his arms over his chest. Jonah keeps his focus on the forms he's filling, knowing the man's sharp eyes are no doubt looking for a reaction in his face. "Something doesn't feel right for me."

"What do you know? We might have had a falling out." 

"Did you?" Jonathan leans over the desk, so focused on Jonah that he doesn't feel it when Vigilia's stinger plunges into the back of his daemon's neck.

"Sort of. I warned him not to cross a dangerous man, and he did not listen." Releasing the venom feels like forming a connection, and Jonah knows right away that Jonathan isn't the one, but it'll still be useful for their purposes to have them. "Mark my words, Jonathan, he'll reappear one of these days, talking about how he ought to have listened to me."

"Hm. If you're so sure. What was it that you called me for?" Jonathan asks, dropping the subject much more easily than he usually would. Behind him, his rakali daemon spasms a little, trying to scratch at an itch he can't reach as Vigilia buzzes back to her human.

"A favor, actually. A dear friend of mine has fallen ill, and I can't think of a better physician to send to his aid."

Jonathan's lips twitch into a smile. Venom or not, the good doctor has never been immune to Jonah's skilled tongue, no matter how much he tries to pretend otherwise.

"You flatter me, Jonah."

"Merely speaking with the truth, old friend. Do pass my regards to good Albrecht, if you will. He's had a rough few years since I last saw him."

* * *

_ I knew something was wrong from the moment I got a good look at his daemon's eyes, iridescent and compound like an insect's. Like Vigilia's. _

_ Do I need to detail what covered his organs, his bones, the inside of his skin? What clustered together in their dozens, and all turned as one to focus on me as I opened his chest, their pupils constricting in the light, with irises of every hue and color? Because whatever it was that did this to him, I know in my heart that it is your fault. _

_ I know not what you did to him or to that poor idiot Bennet. I don't even know what you did to me, for Abico keeps spasming and twitching, and has ceased to speak to me, but I know that it is in my best interest to remove myself from your social circle at once. _

_ Do not write to me again, or I will find you before my response does. _

* * *

Jonah sinks a hand in Bruma's fur, and lets her take him into the Lonely. 

It's always a rush of contradiction, the torrent of feelings he gets from the great white bear. Bruma hates him as much as she loves him, and she tolerates Vigilia's sharp stinger at the same time that she contemplates how easy it would be to snap Jonah's neck in her jaws. 

She walks with him for hours and hours until they come to a pile of bones, and Jonah arches an eyebrow.

"He hasn't been here for that long."

"The Lonely feeds where it can." Bruma rests a paw on the curve of the skull, and shifts on it until it cracks and crumbles under her weight. 

Jonah tuts in reproach. "I wanted to keep that."

"I'll keep it for you." She gives him a fangy grin, and Jonah gets the sudden thought that maybe it wasn't the Lonely that killed dear sweet Barnabas.

"Hm." Jonah crouches to gather some of the sad, coal-colored Dust into a delicate tube of carved crystal. "Will you keep this for me?"

A long, red tongue runs over fangs as long as his fingers. "Anything, for you."

* * *

_ They find the first of their hosts in an employee of their newly built institute. _

_ He's a quiet, unassuming man that had a bad run in with the Dark in his youth and was attracted by the answers the Institute promised like a moth to a flame.  _

_ "Peculiar daemon. A nightjar, isn't she?" Jonah asks in the safety of his office. _

_ Noel Douglass, nervous and stupid, nods. "Her- her name is Pupilla, Mr. Magnus. She's very good at seeing in the dark." _

_ Not very good, apparently, at seeing small insect daemons that land on her very back. _

_ "Very useful. I'm afraid my own is quite fragile." Jonah pulls out the carved crystal and gold capsule he commissioned so long ago, where Vigilia has never once sat. "I had this made to keep her safe."  _

_ "Sometimes I wish I could have one of those for mine," Douglass says, unaware of the stinger carefully looking for its mark. "She's always getting into trouble." _

_ Vigilia strikes, and Jonah Sees the man's entire life spread out before him. Noel's past is a rich tapestry, weaved in love and sorrow and all other emotions that pitifully attempt to make up for the tragic insignificance of human existence. _

_ Jonah blinks, and just for a second he sees himself through eyes that are not yet his, but will be soon.  _

_ Nobody comments on Pupilla's spasms and twitches in the following weeks, or on how she grows more and more quiet by the day, her empty gaze apparently focused on something no one else can see. _

_ By the time Noel Douglass becomes the new Head of the Magnus institute, after the founder's untimely passing, everyone knows his nightjar daemon is proper and quiet, sitting still like a porcelain figure on her human's shoulder. _

_ "We will become inevitable, dear," whispers the wasp that is always buzzing around in the new Head's office. _

* * *

He meets with the new representative of the Lukas family while he's still in the body of James Wright -though he's already scouted a replacement, Elias Bouchard's little hamster daemon has been twitching for weeks now-, and he feels like he's been punched in the gut, when the man with the polar bear daemon walks out of the fog.

"Peter Lukas," Jonah voices the name the Beholding whispers in his mind even as Vigilia buzzes around anxiously, itching to go and dive into the soft white fur. "I trust you've been informed?"

"Jonah Magnus." Lukas nods. "Though I suppose I should be calling you, uh..."

"James, but that won't be for much longer, I'm afraid."

"Yes, how does that happen exactly?" Lukas asks. His ice-blue eyes are alight with a very Beholding-like curiosity, and Jonah isn't ready, not by a long shot, but he's always liked to show off.

The intercom crackles to life when he pushes the button to call his secretary.

"June, dear? Please have Elias come to my office."

* * *

_ Peter and Ina are to their ancestors like a kitten is to a tiger. They are sweeter, tamer, and they lack the danger that was always implicit in their dalliances with Mordechai.  _

_ When Jonah first sinks his hand into Inna's thick white fur, he finds not Bruma's intense mix of ' **I despise you. You are mine. I will kill you, if you do not kill me first'** , but merely a muted sort of devotion.  _

_ He reminds him more of Barnabas than he does of Mordechai, and it's enough to make him feel the slightest bit guilty when he occasionally calls them by the wrong names. _

_ Peter uses their encounters to feed the Lonely, while Jonah tries desperately to elicit from him a response, an emotion that is even just a fraction as intense as he remembers from the original. _

_ It never works, but he's lived on memories for two centuries, and he's made of it an art form. _

* * *

Peter asks about Mordechai often.

Jonah believes it at first to be mere curiosity, wanting to know about this man that rules the Lukas family even in death and with whom he shares this striking physical similarity.

"You were in his will, you know?" Peter says once, taking a long pull from the cigarette before offering it back. 

Jonah parts his lips to receive it, and arches a curious eyebrow. It's an odd topic to breach now, when the room still smells like sex and Ina's lying on the floor next to Jonah's side of the bed.

"I wasn't even aware he had a will, to be honest." He wasn't even present at Mordechai's funeral. He had been newly installed in Noel's body, and very invested in pretending to be above this all, that the idea of surviving even other avatars had been a lot more appealing before he found whatever it was that he kept coming back for in Mordechai's bedroom.

"The executor was a Lukas too. It was all kept inside the family." Peter exhales, and the room is inundated more in fog than in cigarette smoke. "But it was very clear, or as clear as these things get.  _ 'Find whoever bears the eyes of Jonah Magnus, and see to it that they live at ease.'  _ " he intones it like a child reciting a well-learned rhyme.

That would explain a lot of things.

Ina's large head comes to rest on the bed, a hair's breadth away from grazing Jonah's arm. Jonah thinks her black eyes may be more dangerous than her fangs, like another daemon met long ago, confessing to the ridiculous,  _ fatal _ jealousy of a man whose remains he walked into the Lonely for.

"Do we remind you of him?" She asks in a voice that aims for uninterested but misses the mark by a mile.

Even now, two centuries later, Jonah finds it hard to admit that Barnabas might have been the most dangerous of the two. That Peter may be, if he's not careful enough.

"Not in the least, dear."

* * *

_ "I wasn't planning on dying," Gertrude says at the same time that Elias feels Vigilia get snatched out of the air by a claw much too dexterous for its age.  _

_ He has to give it to her, he admits to himself after he shoots her, when Vigilia has shaken herself free of the little mountain of Dust left behind by her daemon. She came far closer than anyone ever did in the past two hundred years.  _

_ Perhaps he should find someone as curious as her, but not nearly as ruthless. _

* * *

"Jonathan. Servatoris. Please take a seat." Jonah watches them fidget on their spot, before complying with the order.

"Thank you. Uh- just Toris is alright, Mr. Bouchard. And Jon." The man's cat daemon peeks out from behind his legs, their fur dark and glossy and covered in spiderwebs that only Jonah can see.

"I believe a certain level of formality is necessary when at the workplace. Especially taking into account the offer I am about to make you."

Jonah smiles when they grow even more nervous, when Jon sits up straighter on the chair and his daemon tries to hide their poofed up tail behind themself.

"I'm- yes?" Jon asks, tangling his fingers together to keep himself from fidgeting.

He's met their type, so desperate to prove they're enough, so scared of anyone finding out just how woefully unprepared they are...

"I'm afraid the police have implied that we might want to look for a new Head Archivist," Jonah starts. "And I think you have just what it takes to fill in Mrs. Robinson's shoes."

* * *

_ When all is said and done, a few things stand out to Jonah. _

_ Peter's horrified face. Ina's black nose covered in golden Dust. For once, he does not think of how much they are like Barnabas and Dìlis, how unlike Mordechai and Bruma.  _

_ In that last, brief flash, their hurt and their pain is beautiful, and it's their own. _

_ Perhaps in another timeline, Jonah thinks as Gertrude's voice comes back to him like a dream, or rather, like a bad memory.  _

_ 'I thought it would hurt more.' _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Narcissistic behavior: Jonah very much believes he's the only person that matters and that others around him are there only to serve as his tools.  
> Manipulation: Jonah manipulates multiple people, including his lovers and his employees. Many of these manipulations end in the victim's death.  
> Unhealthy relationships: Pretty much all of Magnus' romantic relationships are toxic, even the ones in which he actually feels love for the other person, like Barnabas. None of these relationships are framed in a positive light.  
> Mentioned murder: Barnabas Bennet is murdered by Mordecai Lukas. Two employees of the Institute (including OG Elias Bouchard) are effectively killed when Jonah takes over their bodies.
> 
> Daemons:  
> Albrecht's Fiducia is a red squirrel, which often take in orphaned squirrel pups they're related to.  
> Jonathan's Abico is a water rat or rakali, which cut their prey open with "surgical precision" strikes.  
> Barnabas' Dílis is a spotted seal mostly for his association to Mordecai, I'll confess. I think spotted seals are the cutest thing but also they're one of the polar bear's natural prey.  
> Mordecai's Bruma is a polar bear, one of the "loneliest" animals in the world, going for most of their lives without having contact with others of their kind.


	7. Jon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Harm to children  
> Harm to daemons  
> Mentions of drunk driving  
> Arachnophobia  
> Victim-blaming  
> Manipulation  
> Canon-typical violence  
> Non-consensual daemon touching  
> Character death
> 
> See end notes for more information.

_ They never really meant to start reading the book.  _

_ They really only take it to the park with them because they're planning on burying it or throwing it into the pond- it's not like Nana will care, she doesn't, about anything. _

_ Toris is already digging a hole (in the form of a badger, they read it in another book that they're made for digging, and they wanted to test the theory) in the mud, when Jon figures it can't hurt to look at the first page or so. _

_ And then his hands are sweating, his pulse is rushing, but he can't look up from the oddly disturbing illustrations until he hears Tori's yelp, as they're tackled to the ground by a much larger daemon.  _

_ Years later, Jon still struggles to remember both the boy's name and his daemon's shape. He remembers her heavy claws holding Toris down as her human rips the book from his hands.  _

_ He only remembers the bad things, like he always has, like he always will. _

_ The boy's mocking voice, saying the book's title aloud, and the condescending voice he uses to read the first 'knock knock'. The way his face goes slack and his eyes dull, and he passes the first page with a jerky motion of his wrist.  _

_ Jon follows the boy down the street and across town because he  _ **_hates_ ** _ him, he hates him in that moment more than he's ever hated anyone before, including the drunk driver that looked down at him with undeserved sorrow in her eyes and whispered 'I'm really sorry', like it mattered in the least.  _

_ This boy took the book, the one that was sent for him and him alone, and Jon. Wants. It. Back. _

* * *

"His name can't  _ possibly _ be Meme, you're pulling my leg." Jon rolls his eyes. "That doesn't fit  _ any _ daemon naming convention-"

"Um... It's a traditional daemon name in my culture. It means 'he who is long-lived', my grandma's daemon was named the same." Georgie scowls, and Jon feels his stomach drop. Fuck, of- of course it's a real name, why would he question something like someone's  _ daemon's name _ -?!

"Shit- uh- Georgie, I'm sor-"

"Pfft- it's okay," Georgie snorts and leans forward to kiss the tip of his nose, much to his confusion. "His name is Memento, I just wanted to see how you'd react, sorry!"

Jon blinks a couple times, before bringing his hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "You're killing me Georgina, you're killing your boyfriend." He sighs. 

"I just  _ knew  _ you would argue, though!" Georgie's chuckling, and he feels a little snicker escape him too as his face begins to burn. 

"Ok, but  _ Meme _ ?"

"It's cute," Georgie shrugs, smiling. "Like Toto." She blows his daemon a kiss, which Toris corresponds with a purring so loud it shakes their entire frame.

"I'm- Georgie, Toris is already a nickname."

"Toto is actually a very culturally important daemon name," Georgie smirks, leaning down to kiss his forehead now.

"Really?" Jon rolls his eyes. "What does it mean?"

"It means 'they with the cute white socks and pink nose', of course," she says.

Memento -Meme, apparently- lets out a chittering laugh, looking up at him with a mask of innocence betrayed by the amusement in his eyes, and Jon remembers at that moment that foxes are tricksters, and he shouldn't be too surprised.

* * *

_ "Jon. Jon let's go home, you didn't even like the book," Toris begs. They turn into larger forms to try and pull him back, but Jon slaps and pushes at them, twisting their ears and tail to force them to let go of him and rushing after the book until the pain from the pull is the only thing holding him back.  _

_ Eventually they turn back into a sparrow like mum's daemon, and try to distract him by chirping lullabies into his ear, but Jon doesn't care, he wants the book, he  _ **_needs_ ** _ it- _

_ The boy stops in front of a house. _

_ It's a boring house, painted the same as the ones at its sides, and it could belong to anyone, but Jon knows who waits inside.  _

_ He also knows even though he was not satisfied with the other gifts, Mr. Spider  _ **_will_ ** _ be satisfied with him. He  _ **_has_ ** _ to, otherwise why would he have sent the book? _

_ When the boy knocks on the door, when it swings open, whatever is behind it is far too dark to see. Not dark like a broken lightbulb or a moonless night, but rather like someone forgot to draw the inside of the house. Like this is the last page, and that is the back cover, ready to end the story.  _

_ Two long, spindly legs stretch out in a welcoming hug, and Jon launches forward. He only needs to grab the book, because whoever has the book is the guest, the gift- _

_ The boy turns to him already enveloped in the embrace, and Jon flinches back when he sees the trail of pitch-black spiders crawling out the corners of his eyes, the tarantula that climbs from between his lips instead of a scream. One of the boy's hands moves towards him, a single silvery thread wrapped around his wrist. _

_ Jon screams when it clenches tightly into the fabric of his T-shirt, when he begins pulling, his mind crystal clear with panic.  _

_ He doesn't want this, not anymore, he doesn't want to be here, he can't leave Nana alone- _

_ The boy screams too when a small, black-and-white paw with wicked claws slashes four bright red ribbons into his hand, and he lets go. Jon falls backwards and against the kid's daemon, who's heaving piles upon piles of silver silk on the sidewalk, clawing at her own throat until her claws come away gold. _

_ The door slams shut, and Jon is left there on the floor, with a newly settled daemon and covered in sticky webs and Dust. _

* * *

Jon gets to the Institute almost on accident, after Melanie shares a somewhat mocking news article about it on her Facebook page. 

He clicks on it more out of habit than actual curiosity, though it does spark his interest when he sees Georgie (he hasn't interacted with her in months, doesn't know if he ever will again) left a laughing reaction, and a comment saying she'll use some of the cases for her podcast. 

"Looks like all the other places we've checked," he mutters as he scrolls down the website. The article is nothing short of scathing, calling the Institute a 'bizarre circus playing at academia', a place where everyone and anyone can go tell their story without further questioning.

It contains some brief excerpts from random statements, and pictures of certain artifacts that the author deemed amusing enough. A bag of nail clippings, a moldy cantaloupe with an eerie similarity to a human face-

"Jon!" Toris raises on their back legs, their pupils contracting against the light of the monitor. "Scroll back up!" 

They sound upset and afraid, so Jon rests a hand on their back before complying with the request, and-

There, under Toris' white paw, the article displays an open book that claims to only reveal its print in pitch darkness. The pages are obviously blank, but... but there on the inside of the cover is a single stamp, long-dried ink forming words that have been burned to the back of Jon's mind for years. 

_ 'From the library of Jurgen Leitner' _

* * *

_ "-could just talk!" Jon snaps. This is- this isn't how he wants this to end. He's been seeing it coming for a while, that even though he and Georgie loved ( _ **_love_ ** _ , he thinks to himself, this at least hasn't changed) each other, they've started to drift apart.  _

_ That some things have happened that may with time be forgiven (he wants so badly to forgive, but the hurt is there, and his willingness to let it slide only seems to make Georgie angrier), but not forgotten. _

_ "Well maybe I  _ **_don't_ ** _ want to talk!" Georgie responds in kind. She's still going around Jon's flat, shoving her things into a large backpack that Meme hops into when she's close enough. "Maybe I just want to go!" _

_ "Well then- then go." There's not much else to do, is there? "I- Georgie, if you don't want to be here, just go." _

_ She looks at him like he slapped her. He knows what she wants, but he can't find it in himself to give it to her. He doesn't know how to be angry at the people he loves. _

_ "I will," she says finally, before turning around. "Goodbye, Toris."  _

_ The door clicks shut behind her, leaving behind only silence and the painful meow Toris gives from wherever they've hidden now.  _

* * *

Jon's never been one for making friends, really. 

He's too prickly, too guarded. It doesn't help that he somehow always finds himself surrounded by people who adamantly believe in the very thing he's spent his whole life trying to explain and forget.

He's had a few jobs after finishing uni, a little bookstore where he's told his customer service is atrocious, as a substitute teacher at a public school where the kids take to him surprisingly quickly, but the other members of the faculty never cease to treat him with borderline cold politeness.

He doesn't mind much, and he expects the Institute to be the same. He talks to Toris, texts Melanie sometimes, keeps to himself, and is left alone. 

Timothy Stoker apparently did not get the memo. 

He waltzes into Jon's life like he's always been there, ribbing Jon with questions and jokes that Jon only sometimes knows how to respond to. Despite dog daemons being famously clingy, his Agni seems content enough to talk to Toris from a distance until it's Toris themself who starts getting closer to her. 

Jon doesn't know what to think, other than when Tim doesn't think anyone's looking, his face relaxes into a resigned sort of sadness that ignites something hot and angry in Jon's stomach, and makes Toris curl protectively over Tim's larger daemon.

* * *

_ "We're not ready for this. We don't- Toris, we don't know  _ **_anything_ ** _ about- what does an Archivist even do?!" Jon leans heavily against the wall and lets himself slide to the floor of the supply closet. "We can't say yes." _

_ "We weren't given the option to say no," Toris climbs up into his lap, and butts their head under his chin. "We can do this. We're smart, Jon. And- and Mr. Bouchard said we can choose our team, we could ask Tim, and- and Sasha too. They'll help, we wouldn't be alone." _

_ "I don't- you think they'll say yes?" Jon asks. It doesn't sound too terrible, if they're with him. And maybe- maybe they'll find something in the Archives about the spiders that keep following them around. It's the only place they haven't looked in yet, but there  _ **_has_ ** _ to be something.  _

_ "We can't ask them if we stay here, can we?" Toris asks, and Jon snorts a little before flicking them on the nose. _

* * *

It's- it isn't going terribly.

Tim and Sasha are there, they all joked a little about the terrible state of the Archives, he's recording a statement... It's just alright. They're going to be alright. 

"I told you we could do it," Toris says smugly, but Jon doesn't miss the way their tail whips back and forth behind them, his daemon has always been transparent about stress.

"One of us  _ has _ to have some doubts, don't you th- goodness!" Jon flinches on his chair (it's such a large chair, did Gertrude Robinson feel just as small when she sat on it?) when the door to his office flies open, and a large man comes in looking all around like he's misplaced something. "Can I help you?!"

"Oh! Uhm- you haven't seen a dog, have you?" The man asks, clearly surprised to find the office occupied.

"Like... in general?" Jon asks, and then promptly wonders if his paperweight is heavy enough to bash his own head in. ' _ In general'  _ ?!

Toris makes up for it at least, sitting regally like an ivory and obsidian statue on the corner of the desk.

"No, I- it's a spaniel, I think? Small, brown and white. I saw it running this way." The man gives the office another once over, and Jon sees a small mouse daemon peek from among his hair to scan the space as well.

"Excuse me, who are you? And why would there be a dog in my archives?" Jon snaps. He's a figure of authority now, and not everyone is Tim and Sasha, he needs to look respectable, to look the part.

_ That _ seems to make the man pause, and he turns to Jon again with an almost nervous gaze. "Your- uh... You- you must be Mr. Sims then? The new archivist?"

"I am." Jon tilts his chin up, and he only feels slightly less like a child sitting at their parent's desk, playing pretend. "And you must be...?"

"I'm- Martin. Martin Blackwood." The man stands there, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet like he's not sure whether or not he ought to offer Jon his hand for a shake. "I- Elias assigned me to your team."

"He  _ what _ ?" Jon straightens up on his chair. "Where- what department were you at before?"

"The uh- the library. I've been there for about ten years, give or take." The man gives him a sort of shy smile, like he thinks they're bonding while Jon is fending off a panic attack.

Shit. Shit, shit  _ shit _ , this isn't- Toris' tail whips even faster behind them. This isn't good. Is- is this man some sort of... some sort of  _ mole _ Mr. Bouchard planted to catch Jon in his lies? To evidence that he has  _ no idea _ what he's doing?

"You didn't respond to my other question," he forces out, his voice strained and rough. "Why would there be a dog in my archives?"

"Oh! I-" the man clears his throat nervously. "I might have... let it in accidentally? It's- Tim's already helping me look though! We'll catch it right-"

"So you're not only  _ not _ doing your job, but now Tim isn't either. And there's an animal in the Institute." It's not nice of course, but it's a way to regain control over the situation, and moreover, it's the only way Jon can think of to reaffirm an authority he doesn't deserve. "See to it that you get that dog out before it causes any real damage, or I will be having a talk with Elias."

Martin flinches a little at the implied threat, and Jon struggles to not flinch in sympathy. It's what has to be done. 

"Yes, I'll- I'm very sorry. I'll make sure everything's under control, I promise."

"...Well, go already," Jon snaps. His hands are sweating, and if the man stays here for a second longer, he will break.

"Yes! Sorry!" Martin turns around to leave, and before the door closes Jon can  _ just _ barely hear his daemon speak, a surprisingly dry voice for such a small form.

"Great. So the new boss is an asshole."

"Votem-"

The door shuts, and Jon is left alone in an office he does not deserve, in a job he has no idea how to do, with the knowledge that there's someone in his 'team' directly reporting his incompetence to the person who entrusted him with this position in the first place.

* * *

_ "Do you suspect anyone?" Basira asks. Her daemon's sharp eyes practically dig into him from where he's perched on the bookshelf. "A coworker?" _

_ But why would they? Why would Tim or Sasha or Martin hurt Gertrude? Unless- unless none of them are the people he thought they were. _

_ Tim's soul is a hunting dog, and Martin's is made to hide, to go unnoticed. Sasha he suspects too, but she's the only one that's continued to act normal, which is nothing short of amazing considering the trauma. _

_ "I- I have some candidates. I'll keep an eye on it, it's- I will be fine. Probably." Hopefully. Toris curls closer against his shins under the desk, their eyes wide and their pupils contracted. _

_ "Well, you have my card." Basira shrugs. "In case you find anything." _

_ It'll still be months before he finds out the only reason she sits patiently across the desk to listen to a paranoid man's delusions, but for the time being Jon has not realized he's under investigation, and all he feels is a tentative friendship towards the only person that doesn't think he's crazy, the only one that  _ **_listens_ ** _. _

_ Someone killed Gertrude Robinson, and they're coming for him too.  _

* * *

“You say their name is Toris?” asks the man who ruined Jon’s life. His daemon flutters from his shoulder down to Toris’s side, her black and white wings fanning elegantly in the air until she lands, looking at them like a particularly interesting trinket to take back to her nest. Toris swipes at them, their back arched and their hair on end, a low, warning growl deep in their throat.

“Servatoris,” Jon corrects him. His voice sounds strained, his head is still swimming with adrenaline from narrowly escaping the thing that  _ wasn’t _ Sasha. “Their full name is Servatoris.”

Leitner nods once, his wrinkled face contracted in a grim, solemn mask. “The watcher. Let no one say Elias doesn’t appreciate a good joke.”

It’s too much. Whatever the man is implying, whatever he knows- he can’t, not-

Jon shoots to his feet abruptly, flinching at the loud screeching sound of his chair against the stone.

“I need a cigarette.”

  
  


* * *

_ They really shouldn't be here.  _

_ Jon paces up and down the hallway, his steps muffled by socks run ragged after a walk across the city (he threw his shoes into the river, the soles were covered in the man's- in Leitner's blood), wondering just what on Earth were they thinking coming her- _

_ "Jon?" A voice asks behind them, and they're so high-strung right now that Toris bounces off the floor like there's springs in their back legs, their claws digging deep in Jon's chest and shoulders as he whips around. Georgie's standing at her flat's open door, looking at him like he's a ghost. "What are you doing here?" _

_ "It wasn't me," is all he can blurt out at first. Whatever happens next, whether she turns him away or not (why wouldn't she?), he needs to make sure she knows this. "They- Georgie, they said it was me, but I didn't do it." _

_ Georgie gives him a once-over, her eyes catching on his socked feet and the faint pink he could not wash off of Toris' paws. _

_ "...Come on in. You can tell me the rest inside." She takes a step back, and Jon feels his eyes burn. _

_ "I'm- thank you," he whispers, wiping a hand down his face as he steps past her and into the the flat. "I'm sorry, thank you." _

_ "I'll grab you some slippers." She gives his shoulder a squeeze, just like she used to do when he got worked up. "It's nice to see you again, Toto." _

* * *

It's easy to fall back into step with Georgie.

They're both older, different people, but the things that made them click are still there somehow. 

Georgie makes them laugh, browbeats Jon into eating and sometimes into dropping the tape recorder (did he bring it here with him?) for a while.

"-don't know what he puts into it," Jon continues, as he pours the hot water over the tea bag in the mug. 

"It tastes like ginger sometimes," Toris pipes up, and Jon shakes his head.

"Yes, but not always. And the sweet is always just the right amount, I just don't know how he-" Jon jumps a little at Meme's snort, and for some reason the amusement in his clear eyes makes him feel like he's the joke here. "Is something the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing." Georgie shushes her daemon and nudges him with a foot. She turns to Jon with a knowing smile that has much the same effect as Meme's look. "Is this the same Martin that gave you the worm woman's ashes? With the Star Trek hoodies and the mouse daemon that likes to sleep in the empty tea boxes?"

Jon freezes, as the implications in her tone and in the smile as the question rain down on him. As he realizes that if Georgie knows these things that he never really noticed about Martin-

"...Oh," he blurts out, his hands falling limp by his sides. 

Georgie's smile grows wider, warmer. "Oh."

* * *

_ "Did you see all those people?" Jon asks. The bedroom is dark, but he sees one of Toris' eyes reflecting the light coming in from the street, like a miniature green searchlight whose scrutiny he can't hide from. _

_ "I did. They feared us," Toris says quietly, then adds in an even lower whisper. "I liked it." _

_ Jon liked it too, but he does not voice it.  _

_ Are they becoming another Jane Prentiss? Another Jude Perry? His burned hand throbs, sensitive to even the lightest graze of the soft bedsheets. _

_ Are they still human? And if they aren't... are they still themselves at least? _

* * *

It feels odd, that it should end like this. 

What he shared with Tim -what he  _ killed _ with Tim-, deserves a far better ending than sitting side by side on the floor of a cheap motel room with a dismantled fire alarm between them, passing a cigarette back and forth because they're too exhausted to be angry anymore. 

Jon looks at Tim out the corner of his eye, and he has the brief thought that he doesn't remember the last time he saw him smile, his shoulders slumped under the mantle of the Hunt, a chase spurred by a loss so deeply ingrained it's become the thing that defines him.

Agni rests (does she really, all bared teeth and an ever-present growl rumbling deep in her throat?) by a corner of the room, her side flat against the wall, her eyes fixed on the door. 

"Are you planning on coming back?" Jon asks. He still hasn't got the compulsion in check, so it's only a lucky strike that the question comes out normal now. 

"What for?" Tim doesn't look at him, his gaze fixed instead on the way Toris crawls over to Agni, slow and ready to bolt.

"Martin-"

"Martin will be fine." Tim interrupts, before adding very pointedly. "Who knows? Maybe it'll be better for him this way."

And maybe... maybe it will.

* * *

_ The place they find themselves at is neither here nor there, and they are as alive as they are dead, which is to say, not at all.  _

_ Here the Archivist's dreams reach them just as easily as flashes of those that would be their last memories. _

_ Nikola, faceless and grinning, clad in dry skin that should've been Jon's and so horrifyingly  _ **_alone_ ** _. _

_ Tim's dazed expression as he offers her the trigger, deaf to Jon's pleas like Jon was to his before.  _

_ Toris sinking their fangs in Agni's leg, their one green eye gleaming with uncanny intensity. _

_ Fire. _

_ Something calls them forward, Jon knows. It promises the rest they have yearned for their entire life, final, eternal safety from a wretched world that delights in hurting them. _

_ Something else calls them back. If they die now, they will never know what happened, and that somehow feels just as terrifying as the promise of peace. _

_ Then, come from nowhere, a bird cries out. _

_ The Archivist feeds. _

* * *

" _ Six months _ _?!_ "

"Calm  _ down _ _!_ " Basira snaps.

"That'll help him." Georgie rolls her eyes. Meme huffs angrily from his spot by Jon's feet. Toris is only visible where their black ears and green eyes poke from among his pure white fur, no sight of the spots and lines that mirror his many scars. "Jon, how are you feeling?"

"Confused," Jon blurts out. His voice sounds like he's been gargling on gravel, the needle on his arm pinches, the heart rate monitor is going crazy-

"Jon." Georgie takes his hands between hers. Her face looks thinner than he remembers, but six months of standing by someone's deathbed will do that to a person, Jon figures.

"I... thank you for being here," he sighs in the end. He might be confused about everything else, but not the fact that Georgie's presence gives him strength. "I'm sorry I pulled you into this."

Georgie shrugs. Her dark eyes, Jon notices, are just like her daemon's. Warm and amused, like everyone around her is playing part in a joke only she understands. 

"You're here, and Melanie is too. I was going to get involved at some point."

"We've been trying to keep her out as much as possible," Basira pipes in. "We thought it would be useful to have someone that isn't bound by an Institute contract, like Gerry."

"...Who?"

"Gerry Delano?" Basira arches an eyebrow. "Tim showed me some statements he's shown up in, he was Gertrude's assistant I think, but he doesn't talk much about her."

"Gerard Keay? Basira, he's supposed to be- wait- you-" Jon's voice sounds more like a squeak now, and Georgie squeezes his hand. "You said-"

"Tim made it out too?" Toris asks from where they're still enveloped in Meme's embrace. "Is he alright?"

Basira watches him for a long moment, long enough that Jon is starting to worry again, despite the unerringly good news.

"It was Agni that pulled you out. Both of you," she says finally. 

"...Oh." 

"He's been coming to keep watch too," Georgie adds. She knows him too well, or perhaps he's just transparent. "He's just- he's been busy lately. Some more things happened at the Institute."

"Asides from Gerard Keay coming back from the dead?"

"Well... he wasn't the only one." Basira shoots the beeping heart rate monitor a look. "I'm not sure it's a good idea to tell you right now."

"I- no, I- I need to  _ know _ ." Jon grabs at Basira's sleeve with his free hand, and he's pleasantly surprised that she doesn't flinch away. "Please."

"...Alright. But it's going to be a long story," she sighs. 

Georgie lets go of his hand, and climbs to her feet. "I'll go bring some tea. Come on, Meme."

Jon nods absentmindedly as Georgie closes the door behind her. This is- the comfort brought by a perfectly brewed cup of tea, different every time but still somehow his favorite, brings another thought to his mind. 

"Basira, is- has Martin been here too?" He asks. He does not like the flash of sympathy in Basira's face at the name. 

"Hm... Georgie says she saw him just an hour or so ago, but- but he went away when he heard you were awake."

"...Oh." That doesn't- that isn't great.

"Don't- it's not about you. Or I don't think it is. He's been disappearing a lot, not even Gerry can find him lately and they-" Basira cuts herself short, when her daemon lets out a short, anxious screech. "...I think it's best if we wait for the tea."

* * *

_ Even after a handful of statements that mentioned him, Jon never really formed an opinion on Gerard Keay. _

**_(He did.)_ **

_ He felt a vague sense of companionship for this man that dedicated his life to destroying books like the one that destroyed his childhood, but it wasn't some sort of- of idolizing or anything. _

**_(Sasha called it a hero-crush, and said it was adorable.)_ **

_ And- and it's not like it matters anyway, he can't really be angry at Martin for moving on, for finding comfort in stability, in someone that knows about this world but is not- someone who is still human.  _

**_(It still hurts, though.)_ **

_ "Gertrude had a cat daemon too," the man says, eyeing Toris with an expression that can only be read as distaste. "Ecdurus was a lot more imposing, though." _

**_(In the end what's one more person that has found him lacking?)_ **

* * *

"I thought you'd be more displeased to see me awake," Jon says. He's always been adept at poking festering wounds. 

"Me too." Tim doesn't look at him, but his hands tighten around the edges of the box he's carrying, full of statements Sasha (the real one, not the monster Jon remembers when he thinks of her name) helped check and file before she was taken. "I'm tired Jon."

Jon, perhaps more than anyone, understands this enough to not press any further. He crouches before his daemon, looking into her bright amber eyes, so much like a dancing fire, like a burning sun. 

"Thank you, Agni. I- I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you."

Agni tilts her head to the side. She's still got the face of a hunter, even when there's no longer anything to chase. What is it that they're hunting now?

"This is your last chance, Jon."

* * *

_ "You could at least  _ **_try_ ** _ to stay alive for him." Gerry rolls his eyes. He's leaning against the wall of Jon's office, a picture of careful disinterest like he didn't just carry Jon here, like Toris isn't still carefully held between Boni's jaws. "It would be a nice gesture, I think." _

_ "I'll consider that the next time I plan on getting stabbed," Jon grunts, pressing the ball of bunched up tissues tighter against his bleeding shoulder. _

_ "See to it that you do." He rolls his eyes. "What were you  _ **_thinking_ ** _ , taking on Melanie alone?" _

_ "I was  _ **_not_ ** _ going to put Basira and Tim in danger again," Jon grunts sullenly. He's done that far too much already. _

_ Gerry's eyes dig into him. "You know what I mean."  _

_ "I don't care much for your pity," Jon huffs. He was  _ **_not_ ** _ going to ask for help from a man who finds him a disappointment already. "Come here Toris." _

_ Gerry sighs. "Let me take a look at your shoulder." _

_ Boni drops Toris carefully on the floor, but they don't move to join Jon at the desk, leaning heavily against her front legs instead. _

_ "I'm quite fine, thank you." _

_ "Don't be ridiculous, you don't know what you're doing." _

_ "And you're an expert on stab wounds?" Jon snaps. Having Gerry around always makes him fairly irritable, but the pain is thinning his tolerance by the second.  _

_ "Yes, and on mulish archivists, of course." Gerry rolls his eyes. His words are followed by a heavy silence, the kind Jon knows from experience it's not wise to break, but Toris is currently leaning on Boni's chest, their eyes closed in a blink with no end in sight, and it's- it's very tiring to be at each other's throats all the time. _

_ "You really loved her, didn't you?" _

_ The mood in the room grows even heavier, if such a thing is possible. Jon briefly regrets asking, but he  _ **_wants_ ** _ to know more about this woman that was everything he couldn't be. _

_ "...She saved me from my mother," Gerry says after an eternity. His eyes are fixed in Boni, whose tail is tucked between her legs, and has stopped moving completely. "I'm- there was a Leitner. End-aligned. She bound herself to it, or rather her soul, if she had such a thing. Having a page in it made her pretty much immortal." _

_ "Is that why you were accused of her murder?" _

_ "It was a pretty bad scene, I suppose." Gerry chuckles humorlessly. "She was at the house after they cleared me for lack of evidence." _

_ "Did you burn the book?" Jon asks. It's not a big leap, knowing what Gerry went on to do after. _

_ He's understandably surprised, when Gerry shakes his head. "I learned very early on to never cross my mother, Jon." _

_ "Did Gertrude do it, then?" _

_ Gerry gives a single, curt nod. "Ecdurus took her daemon head-on. It wasn't much but it distracted him for long enough that she could throw the whole thing in the chimney." _

_ The Eye supplies the memory of a moment he never witnessed. A large, dark shadow thrashing around, with a smaller, furrier shape slashing its face to ribbons before it's batted aside with a large paw tipped in wicked claws.  _

_ A book catching fire, and a last, enraged scream. _

_ It's really no surprise, then, that Gerry first looked at him and Toris and found them a pale reflection of their predecessor. _

_ "I'm sorry I'm not her."  _

_ Gerry's gaze seems to soften at that. "It- I guess it was unfair of me to expect otherwise. Not even  _ **_I_ ** _ could be her, in the end." _

_ "And maybe that's a good thing," Boni pipes in quietly, her yellow eyes fixed on Jon. "You're not half bad yourself, you know?" _

* * *

"How's the remembering going?" Jon asks carefully, making sure the question is free of compulsion. 

Sasha (it still feels weird to think of her by that name, when he remembers the other one so clearly) looks up at him from where she and Tim are going over her old Facebook friends.

"Fairly good. I think I remember most of what happened in the Archives before I got lost." She shrugs. "It's everything else that's giving me trouble."

"It's been much faster since she came back to the Institute, though." Tim rolls his eyes by her side. "I don't like it, but Gerry was right, it seems."

"He usually is." Jon nods gravelly. 

"Huh. I forgot you're back to being his number one fan." Tim shrugs, even as Sasha smacks him softly on the shoulder.

Jon arches an eyebrow. "Excuse me?" 

"You know, after all the awkwardness with both of you being Martin's kinda sorta exes." Tim's amusement feels careful, like someone testing the ice ahead of them to make sure it won't crumble beneath them.

Still, it feels like  _ before _ , and Jon has to take a moment to recover from the sight of Toris tackling Agni to the ground, to bite her and groom her in equal measure, with Sasha's laughter in the background.

* * *

_ "What the  _ **_fuck_ ** _ , Jon?!" Gerry snaps after Basira drags Daisy out of the room. The coffin sits wide open behind them, and Jon is all but hanging off his grip, limp with exhaustion like Toris is as Boni carefully licks them clean of dirt. "The Buried? Really? Tim's  _ **_pissed_ ** _ at you." _

_ "Is he?" Jon asks, still a bit dazed by the onslaught of sensations, the feeling of not being trapped.  _

_ "You're an  _ **_idiot_ ** _ , of course he is. I'm- how did Martin keep you alive for three years, you have less self-preservation instincts than-" _

_ "Are you angry too?" The question stops Gerry in his tirade, which is very good because Jon has been thinking about this ever since he stepped into the Buried and frankly he feels a bit dizzy from all the oxygen and not in any fit state to argue. _

_ "I'm- yes?" Gerry scowls. In the background, Toris has begun grooming Boni back. "Jon, I can't stress how  _ **_stupid_ ** _ this was. You could've been trapped there foreve-!" _

_ He stops quite abruptly, when Jon pulls down on his shoulders to bring him down into a kiss, because he should've done this before climbing into the coffin just like he should've done it before leaving for the Unknowing, but he didn't back then and now feels like the perfect moment for it, drunk on the thrill of survival- _

_ Supernatural exhaustion means he passes out almost immediately, but even though it might have not been the best kiss, Jon thinks he got his point across. _

* * *

It's a bit  ridiculous, that they find the Archives' biggest secret because they were fooling around.

Gerry, as it turns out,  _ really _ enjoys pushing people against walls when he kisses them, which the Archives' old flimsy shelves are very unequipped to handle. 

The boxes of old, fake statements rain down on them like confetti, and they hush each other's laughter like they're two teenagers at the back of a movie theater instead of two grown men stealing whatever happiness they can at the place of power of a fear deity.

"Just so you know, this never happened with Martin," Gerry chuckles. 

"You couldn't manhandle Martin like this." Jon rolls his eyes, gesturing with his chin to where their daemons lay entangled with each other, Boni's tail wagging a mile a minute as Toris lays on her belly and butts their head under her chin. 

"I can stop whenever you ask me to, Mr. Sims."

"I wasn't complaining."

"Come here, you." Gerry chuckles again, pushing Jon until his back hits against another shelf.

What falls down this time is a single cassette tape, bouncing off Jon's head and landing neatly on Gerry's hands.

The front of it reads a single word, and Jon recognizes Gertrude's handwriting from the way Gerry's face pales when he reads his name.

* * *

_ "We need to tell him, we told the others." Gerry squeezes his hand. "Martin deserves the choice." _

_ Jon sighs, looking at the heavy wooden door with the carved eyes that marks the entrance to Elias' office. "Gerry, what if he says no?" _

_ "Then we'll stay," Gerry says firmly. "We still don't know if it'll work with you anyways, if he- if he wants to stay, then we'll find a way to make it work. But the others have a choice now, he doesn't have to keep working for Lukas to keep them safe." _

_ "That's not what I'm worried about." Jon shakes his head. "What if it's too late, and the Lonely..." He doesn't finish the thought. _

_ What if Martin is not Martin anymore? _

_ "...Well, one way to find out." Gerry squares his shoulders, and turns the doorknob until the door clicks open. _

* * *

Martin is not inside the office.

This wouldn't be any strange in and  of itselfon itself , if the entire room wasn't covered in thick, swirling fog.

"I- his jacket is still here." Jon scowls, gesturing to the perch behind the door. "And his backpack.

"Don't touch anything," Gerry orders. The change in his demeanor would be fascinating to watch, if Jon wasn't worried sick about Martin. He moves like Daisy or Tim, but where their silent steps were guided by the thrall of the Hunt, Gerry's are rooted in experience. "Boni?"

The daemon's tail is held stiff and high, and she treads carefully around the office, sniffing the air a couple times, before she lets out a long whine.

"Gerry-" she cries out, and Jon knows it's only years of discipline keeping her from dashing forward. "Gerry, in the desk- Toris!"

Jon rushes in after his daemon, ducking under Gerry's extended arm. There's really not much that could hurt him anyways, he decides as he pulls open the drawer Toris is frantically scratching at. 

It looks unremarkable at first, just a regular drawer holding Martin's keys, his wallet, his phone and-

"Dear lord- Gerry!" Jon croaks out, his mind reeling back from the terrible sight before him.

"What is- shit!" Gerry recoils as soon as he has a look too, and Jon hears him curse and swear as he tries to regain his bearings.

Votem's little head turns to him with what looks like a titanic effort, and he looks so  _ terribly _ alone.

"Jon."

"Vot- Votem? Where's Martin?!" Jon stutters out, swallowing back the waves of rage and nausea. "What-"

"Jon, grab him!" Toris snaps, even going so far as to hook a claw in Jon's sleeve to pull his hand down. "He needs a human, he needs you!"

"I- Toris I can't just touch Martin's daemon, he's- he's not here!"

"He needs us!" Toris swipes at him again, their tail whipping anxiously from side to side. "Jon, trust me!"

Jon looks back at Gerry and Boni, only to find them still frozen to the spot, Boni's tail tucked between her legs and her eyes open so wide he can see the whites around her irises. No- no help from them then. 

"Vot- I'm going to lift you. It's- it's only until we find Martin, I'm- I'm not going to hurt you," he promises. Not again, not ever. 

He scoops him up carefully, and it's a terrifying, overwhelming thought that all that is  _ Martin _ can fit in the palms of his cupped hands. Also worrying is the fact that touching Martin's soul brings forth a feeling of terror, feelings flashing and bouncing between them like a confused bird in a cage. 

_ 'Pain. Martin. Hurts. Cold. Martin. Alone, so alone. Martin. Help, no one comes. No one will. Martin!' _

"You're- you're alright now. You're safe," Jon mumbles. Votem's once luxurious copper and white fur looks dull over Jon's skin, as the mouse daemon curls in on himself and tries to press himself closer and closer against him. Jon holds him against his heart, and he lets out a quiet, strained sigh of delight. "Votem, where's Martin?"

"The tunnels. He- deep. Jon, he's so  _ far _ ."

"We'll- we'll get you to him, Votem," Gerry's voice is still strained, when he leans over Jon's shoulder to look at him. "And then we can- we'll get you some flowers to snack on, would you like that? You can sit on Boni again, and Toris will be there this time."

"Promise?"

"On my life."

* * *

_ "And he just broke out?" Gerry snaps.  _

_ "Walked out like he'd been at the spa, the guards didn't lift a finger to stop him." Basira shakes her head. "It can't be a coincidence... you're going to find him down there." _

_ "That's great news actually." There's something burning in Tim's eyes, as Agni wags her tail excitedly, her snout filled with perhaps too many fangs. "I've got a strong worded complaint for the double boss." _

* * *

They hear them before they see them, as they carefully climb up to the steps of the imposing turret in the middle of the cavernous room.

"Don't be ridiculous, Peter. This was not part of the wager," Elias snarls. Jon feels a spark of dark delight catch in his chest at the thought that there's none of his usual smug amusement present in the tone.

"I just had to turn dear Martin to the Lonely, didn't I?" says another, unknown voice. "This is my deal with him."

"Martin knows better, don't you? If you kill me, you kill  _ everyone _ who's ever signed a contract with the Institute." There's a faint hint of nerves in Elias' voice. "Is that what you want? To kill Jon and-"

"And all the others who abandoned you?" The unknown man interrupts. Jon looks over his shoulder at Gerry, who mouths the name 'Lukas' at him. "You know what the prize is, Martin. I can take it all away, the heartbreak, the grief..."

"...So that was it?" Martin asks, and Jon has to press Votem tighter against his chest to muffle his pained squeak. "You made me turn away from everyone just- just for some pissing contest between you two?"

When Jon peeks carefully around the threshold, it turns out seeing the scene inside the turret is even more confusing than just listening to it. 

There's a tall, broad man with a navy blue coat around his shoulders and a polar bear daemon next to him, standing with his arms behind his back and a pleased smile on his face.

Across him stands Elias, and Jon knows now why he refused to see him at all after he woke up from his coma. Looking at him through the lens of the Watcher makes his secret painfully obvious to Jon's eyes. It's like the images of Elias Bouchard and Jonah Magnus had been hastily overlapped over each other, Bouchard's body no more than a translucent cocoon protecting the real thing. On his shoulder sits a sad empty hamster daemon that hasn't spoken in decades, and on the daemon's back rests his real soul, a bright blue wasp whose wings are trembling in anticipation, as they stare across the room.

Following their gaze brings him to Martin, standing over Magnus' dessicated body with a knife that couldn't look more out of place in his hand, and for all that Jon knows he would tower over him, Martin looks  _ painfully _ small without Votem peeking out from his hair. 

"Did they really forget about me, or was it all you?" Martin asks.

"Does it really matter?" Lukas asks. "They forgot you still."

"I suppose it doesn't." Martin shrugs. "...I really do want to kill him."

"That's very understandable, after what he put you and your friends through." Lukas' smiles just like his daemon, all cold, empty amusement when he turns to Elias. "Ask me not to do it, and I won't."

"Is that it?" Elias spits out, a venomous glare aimed back at Lukas. "You want me to  _ beg _ ?"

"Why, yes!" Lukas' grin grows wider. "Surely you of all people understand the pleasure of a little gloating, don't you?"

"You-"

Jon yelps, when Votem bites at his finger and slips from his grasp, heading straight across the room in a desperate dash for his human. Elias' sharp green gaze whips to him, and then to Votem before he moves, and everyone moves with him.

Jon throws himself over Votem, but Elias never quite gets to stomp on him because Gerry tackles him backwards and to the ground.

"Jon?! Ger- what are you doing he- Tim?!" Martin sounds more confused by the second, as more and more people join in the fray.

Agni and Boni bite at the polar bear daemon's legs, while Toris attacks her eyes with a ferocity Jon hasn't seen them muster since he was nine and about to be taken by the Web. For all that he was pushing for Martin to kill him, Peter Lukas is at the moment quite busy with trying to pull Gerry off of Elias, who's already got a bloody nose and a few fingers bent out of place. 

Jon remembers quite abruptly that _this_ _is the man_ that shot Gertrude in cold blood.

"Martin! We- we came for you." Jon climbs to his feet with all the grace his tired bones allow him, scooping Votem up again and dropping him in his shirt's front pocket. "The others are waiting at the Archives, but we came to bring you back."

"I- but how- I thought you'd forgotten about me, like- like I asked you to." Martin gives him a puzzled look, but his whole frame relaxes a little more with each step Jon takes to bring his daemon closer to him.

"Martin, I wouldn't- ah!" Jon's words cut into a pained scream, when Lukas' daemon bats Toris off her face with a paw larger than their entire body, and throws them across the room, well outside their range and causing his entire body to spasm with the pain of the pull.

"Jon?!" Martin turns to Lukas, who's got a forearm hooked around Gerry's neck, whose daemon (bleeding golden from her slashed open face) has Agni and Boni held under her enormous paws. "Peter, let them go! This wasn't part of the deal!"

"Look at the circus you caused, I hope you're happy now." Elias spits a mouthful of blood as he climbs to his feet. "Martin, step away from my body."

"No." Martin snaps. "I'm  _ sick _ of taking orders. Make him let them go,  _ now _ ."

"I'll just kill them instead," Lukas says. His eyes are wide and panicked, Jon notices once Toris has crawled back enough to soothe the pain of the pull. Something tells him this situation is going as far from what he planned as possible. "Do what he says, or I'll snap this one's neck, send him packing with Gertrude."

Gerry thrashes in his grip, but between Lukas' forearm pressing down on his windpipe, and the polar bear daemon squeezing Boni under a paw, he simply can't get enough traction to break free. 

Through Toris' sharp eyes, Jon catches a shadow moving closer to Martin and Magnus' body, their steps silent and careful like a predator assessing the best moment to strike.

A spark of understanding burns in Martin's dark eyes. "You didn't actually want to kill him, did you? All you wanted was to scare him."

"Martin-" Elias snarls again. "This will end very poorly for you and your little friends if you don't step away."

"Let them go, and we'll leave," Jon pipes in, then flinches a little when all the stares in the room fall on him. "We'll leave forever, his body will be safe."

"You- how do you know-?" Elias' face pales a couple shades, before he whips to face Gerry with his lips curled into an ugly sneer. " _ You _ "

"Gertrude made sure I got to hear my dad one last time," Gerry cackles, the strain to his voice unable to disguise the satisfaction. "How does it feel to know both of them slipped between your fingers?"

"You can't  _ possibly _ be this stupid, Jonathan." Elias turns to him again, and Jon feels something inside him purr hungrily at the fear in those ageless eyes. "The Watcher won't let its Archivist go."

"Then I'll stay!" Jon snaps. "I'll go along with whatever it is you're planning, I'll- Toris,  _ now _ !"

Jon's daemon is not suited for combat, small, fast and good at hiding instead. No one really expects them to throw themself at Peter Lukas' face, and start tearing it to ribbons with their wicked claws. 

Which in turn, is the perfect distraction for Tim to snatch the knife from Martin's grip, his hand fisted in the dried body's hair to stretch his neck.

"You all talk way too much," is all Tim says before he plunges the knife in Magnus' throat. 

* * *

_ "We'll get a house. With a studio," Gerry adds, running a finger over Jon's naked shoulder. "Martin said he always wanted to have a place to write in." _

_ "Oh?" Jon rolls his eyes fondly. "And what will he write about, Mr. Delano?" _

_ "Your hands," Gerry says immediately, and Jon gets the feeling he'd been planning for this question. "Toris' eyes. The way you smile when it's already morning, but you don't want to get up yet." _

_ Jon isn't much of a blusher, but his face feels warm because Martin  _ **_would_ ** _ find beauty in those things, unremarkable as they are. _

_ "And- and what would you want in the house?" He asks, his voice a bit hoarse with emotion. _

_ "A garden!" Boni pipes in when Gerry takes too long to answer, Toris draped over her back like a cape. "To run around and take naps, all six of us." _

_ "That's very specific," Jon laughs, and he laughs harder when Gerry gives him a sheepish smile. "I'm sure Martin would love a garden too." _

* * *

The body of Elias Bouchard falls like a puppet whose strings have been abruptly cut, and Gerry practically flies forward when Lukas throws him aside to catch him before the floor does. 

There's a small puddle of golden Dust by his side, where the hamster daemon splattered against solid stone, where the wasp daemon couldn't take flight again. 

"Jon!" Martin yells, alarmed. Jon whips around in time to see him catch Tim in a terrible mirror of the scene across the room. He turns to look for Agni with his heart hammering a storm in his chest, and finds her collapsed on the floor where Lukas' daemon left her, snarling weakly at Boni when she tries to nudge her to her feet.

"Don't- Boni, it's okay," Jon holds a hand up to stop her. "I'm- Agni, I'm here. Like at the wax house, remember?"

Agni's eyes are like dying embers, when they finally focus on his. "Maybe it was our last chance too," she says, her voice usually so confident now nothing more than a pitiful whine.

"Nonsense. Let's- let's go, madame." Jon gives her a weak smile, and he waits just until she gives an even weaker wag of her tail, before hooking his arms under her.

She feels warm, and all the emotions -good and bad but most of all confusing- Tim holds for him flood him at once, so strong and overwhelming he thinks he's lucky he wasn't conscious the first time she touched him. This man never forgave him, maybe he never will, but there is love there, like the one Jon feels as he lays Agni down with her head on Tim's chest. Toris lays themself on her flank, purring like a small engine, and Agni sighs.

"What's wrong with him?" Gerry asks, pressing two fingers to Tim's neck. "He's breathing, but- Jon? What-"

"I don't know." Jon shakes his head. "The Eye isn't telling me anything-"

"Then what do we do? Just- just wait for him to die?!" Gerry snaps. 

"I don't- Lukas!" Jon's head whips up when the thought strikes him, because he doesn't know, but he knows someone who  _ does _ , and he has just the tools to make him speak. "What is- wh- where is he?"

All that's left of the man is his polar bear daemon, looming over Elias' body like a statue.

"J- Jon?" Martin asks behind him, and there's an odd echo to his voice, like he's being heard over water. "I think- I think he's gone."

"Gone wh- Martin?!" Jon's heart picks up speed again, when he turns to find Martin covered in swirling, heavy fog.

"Mar- hey. Hey! Stay with me, look- Martin!" Gerry shoots a hand forward to try and grab Martin's shoulder, his eyes ablaze with a panic that the Eye in Jon consumes with gusto. "Mart- it's- you have to think of what you love! You have to follow it out! Martin!" 

It's all moot. Martin fades in a swirl of fog, leaving behind only cold, and the metallic smell of tears. 

There is a muffled whine by his chest, and Jon remembers.

He never gave Votem back.

* * *

_ "You have to go," Gerry says almost immediately, turning from the point where Martin disappeared with a determined scowl. "Now." _

_ "I- g- go where?" Jon stutters out. Everything is just happening so  _ **_fast_ ** _ - _

_ "After him. Gert- she told me these things have  _ **_doors_ ** _ , Jon. I'm- I saw her pull Dekker out of the Vast once, you have to go get him!" _

_ "Bu- how?" If anything, the knowledge that she did this before him makes everything even worse. Jon's far too conscious of the fact that he's never been the Archivist Gertrude Robinson was. _

_ "I don't know! My best- try to find Martin." Gerry grabs him firmly by the shoulders, and the pressure is enough to ground him a little, to make him focus on Gerry's fretful face. "Try to See him, and  _ **_follow_ ** _." _

_ "I'm- but what- what about you? And- and Tim? The other's-"  _

_ "Jon, we'll be fine. I'm- Martin needs you right now,  _ **_go_ ** _!" _

* * *

Jon takes a step into the Lonely and collapses in a wordless, agonizing scream.

The pain is excruciating, and Jon wonders how Martin didn't outright  _ die _ from it, as he sees Toris' tail disappear lighting-fast into the fog.

He hears them yowling in pain even as they bounce away, but it's all he can do to fight off the pain of the pull, cling to consciousness because he knows if he collapses here he's lost.

"Jon," says a tired,  _ beloved _ voice by his heart. "Keep breathing. I'm here. Hol- hold me up."

He pulls Votem from his pocket and brings him up to his face with shaking, careful hands. The mouse daemon clings to him, patting his cheeks with his little hands like he's trying to convince himself Jon's still there, and every touch is another burst of heat, of emotion, of  _ Jon, Jon, JON _ .

"We were- Votem, we're going to get a house." In this place where everything is cold and dull, it feels even more important to hold on to the memory of a future.

"A house?" Votem asks, his whiskers tickling against Jon's cheekbone like a kiss. "That's too expensive."

"Or a flat, I don't know. Something with a garden. You can eat all the flowers you want." Jon curls tighter over him, as Toris goes even further and further, leaving him behind, tearing them apart. "I saw them, you know? The- the chewed up petals on my nightstand at the hospital."

Votem presses closer to his cheek, like he wants to meld with him, like a plant looking for the sun. "You took too long to wake up."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

* * *

_ Sharp as his sight might be, there are some things the Archivist does not see. _

_ This is especially true when his eyes are clouded with fog and pained tears, focused on finding one and one man alone, holding a soul that isn't his like it's his only tether to the world he left behind.  _

_ He does not see, then, as two gleaming green eyes snap open, and the Heart of the Institute begins to beat anew. _

* * *

It feels like an eternity, before he finally gathers enough strength to stand. He still feels like his entrails are being torn, but he has- he has Martin's heart in his hands, warm and strong and  _ brave _ , and it's enough to get moving at least.

"You won't find him, you know?" Lukas' voice asks behind him. His face is still dripping in blood from the many scratches Toris sliced in his skin, and he looks like he aged ten years in the last five minutes. 

"What do you want?!" Jon snaps. The Watcher reacts to his frustration, his eyes burning with ill-contained power.

"What do  _ you _ want, Archivist?" Lukas asks. "You were his big gamble, you know?"

"What?"

"He was going to change the world with you. A plan two centuries on the making, and I ruined it. I ought to be proud." The man sighs, and something clicks in Jon's mind so abruptly it knocks the air out of his lungs. 

Two men walked into the Lonely after a lost love, but only one stands any chance of getting them back.

"Will- Peter Lukas,  _ what did you want _ ?" Jon asks. The fog around him colors green with the glow from his eyes, turning Lukas' skin an even nastier shade of gray.

"Recognition." To his credit, the man doesn't humiliate himself by trying to resist the compulsion. This is not a desire for grandeur, Jon Knows, but rather a useless bid for attention, for someone to see a humanity that still clings so fiercely to existence, despite the futility of it all. 

Jon doesn't pity him as much as he understands him, because he knows if things had been a little different, he would've lost his name for his title a long time ago, like Lukas lost his to a memory.

"What do you want now?" He asks again, no compulsion this time, just the only offering he can make anymore.

"I hope you outlive them all," Lukas says. "I hope you live to see yourself  _ alone _ , Archivist."

"... I'll make it quick."

"That's a lot kinder than your master ever was."

* * *

_ At the heart of the Panopticon the body of Elias Bouchard rests under a golden shroud, unnoticed by anyone but finally, blessedly free. _

* * *

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Jon whispers after the shadow of Peter Lukas fades from the world forever. "I'm sorry you had to see what I am."

Votem climbs Jon's sleeve, carefully and painstakingly until he can sit on Jon's shoulder and press another featherlight kiss to his chin. 

"You are Jon. And that's all I care about."

Jon opens his mouth to reply, but any words he planned on saying are replaced by a startled yelp as a feeling so intense as to make him shiver slams into him like a wave.

It's pleasure, he realizes after he starts regaining his wits. The soft delight of laying under the sun on a crisp morning, of sitting in a warm bathtub, of coming home to find it smelling of your favorite food. It dulls the pain of the pull more and more by the second, until Jon can't feel it anymore.

A ghost hand runs down the back of his neck and Jon shivers at the gentleness in the touch, at the sheer amount of  _ care _ in the hand's caress, and he suddenly understands.

When he finds them, Martin is still running his fingers down Toris' back, with tears running down his round face and disappearing between his smiling lips, or getting lost in Toris' fur as they butt their head under Martin's chin, purring and kneading on his sweater in a display that would frankly be embarrassing, if Jon wasn't so completely, utterly  _ taken _ by the sight. 

"Jon!" Martin's eyes light up when he catches sight of him, though they begin to grow nervous when Jon doesn't move an inch. "I'm- sorry, I just- I didn't mean to touch them, they just-"

"Came at you out of nowhere?" Jon arches an eyebrow at his daemon, who merely gives him a smug look as they purr even louder. "It's okay. I think it's only fair, actually."

"I- yes. Thank you- thank you for finding him." Martin smiles, tear-streaked and absolutely  _ perfect _ . "Thank you for finding us- oh!"

If there's space for his daemon in Martin's arms, Jon reasons, there's bound to be space for him. Besides, it feels like the least awkward way to give Votem back.

"I've missed you," he whispers against Martin's chest. "I'm sorry it took us so long."

It takes a moment, but Martin's arms wrap themselves around him as well. He's back to looking whole, with Votem nuzzling his cheek with a pleased sigh.

"It doesn't matter. You came back. I just wanted you to come back." 

Martin presses a kiss to the crown of his head, and Jon feels like he might just start crying as well.

They remain there for what feels like hours, the cold of the Lonely unable to touch them in each other's arms, regardless of how furiously the entity tries. If there was ever an anchor against it, it's the courage to love fiercely, defiant in the face of everything the world has thrown at them.

"Jon?" Martin asks eventually. 

"Hm?"

"I- what happened to Peter?"

Oh.

"I- Martin-" he starts nervously.

"He's gone now. He can't reach you again." Toris' eyes gleam the same dangerous green as Jon's, not a single ounce of regret in their depths. 

"Ah. That's- that's good, I suppose." Martin sighs, and squeezes Jon a bit tighter. "I'm sorry you had to do that."

"I don't think he wanted to stay around anymore," Jon says quietly. The man's loss, born decades ago, still gnaws at him. "I guess we'll never find out what Elias wanted to use me for."

"I don't care." Martin's voice is cold with distaste. "But I do have a question."

"Hm?"

"How are we going to get out of here without Peter?"

Jon grins up at him, feeling every bit as mischievous as Toris looks with their tail whipping in excitement behind them.

"Didn't you hear what Gerry said?" He asks.

"He said- he said to remember what I love?" Martin arches an eyebrow. 

Jon nods solemnly. "And follow it out."

And there, almost like marking his words, Boni's single, mournful howl pierces through the fog. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Harm to children: Jon's childhood bully is killed by the Web. This is implied but not described.  
> Harm to daemons: Jon's childhood bully and his daemon are forcefully separated, and the daemon falls apart and dies. This is mentioned but not described. Toris gets roughed up by other daemons a lot.  
> Mentions of drunk driving: It is implied that Jon's parents were killed by a drunk driver. This is not described or further explored.  
> Arachnophobia: Jon's childhood bully and his daemon are severely affected by the Web, including having spiders burrowing out of their mouths, eyes and noses, and barfing spiderwebs.  
> Victim-blaming: As in canon, multiple characters blame Jon for circumstances outside of his control. This is not framed in a positive light.  
> Manipulation: As in canon, Jonah Magnus manipulated Jon into the Archivist position, triggering his transformation into an avatar of the eye.  
> Canon-typical violence: Self explanatory.  
> Non-consensual daemon touching: Toris is a pretty liberal daemon when it comes to touching I supppose. They touch Jon's childhood bully to make him let go of Jon and save him. Jon grabs Martin's daemon after finding him alone at Martin's office; though this is framed as a necessary, positive-ish thing that gives Votem comfort, and Votem consents to the grabbing, Martin is not there to consent. Toris attacks Peter Lukas in order to surprise him and give the others a chance to break free. Jon grabs Agni(with her consent) to get her close to Tim, who is unconscious at the moment.Toris voluntarily touches Martin in the Lonely; this is only mentioned and it's framed as something positive that helps save Martin, but it is done without Jon's consent, as he's not present at the moment.  
> Character death: Peter Lukas, Elias Bouchard(Jonah Magnus).


	8. Gertrude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Harm to daemons  
> Grey morality  
> Arachnophobia  
> Manipulation  
> Murder/ Character death  
> Canon-typical violence  
> Non-consensual daemon touching  
> Abusive parents
> 
> See end notes for more information.  
> Additional note: Gertrude-era assistants are aware of Fear business because I extrapolated that from this line (Taken directly from the MAG167: Curiosity transcript)  
>  _"Alongside this inherited survivor, Gertrude would add two more assistants: Eric Delano and Emma Harvey. They were young, like her, keen to delve deeper into those strange secrets that back then were spoken of more openly."_

"What was he even doing here?" Gertrude huffs as she rummages around among Stacey's trash, notes upon notes of his new classification for things that ought to be destroyed, not  _ studied _ . "Look at this, he had all the Archives at his disposition, and he was  _ naming _ them, like  _ pets _ ."

"We shouldn't speak ill of the dead," Ecdurus says, sitting statue-like at the corner of the large, sturdy desk. "But the man was an imbecile."

Gertrude snorts. The dry sense of humor is something she and her daemon have in common, a trait from after the fire came and took their lives away and they decided it was better to snark at these things than to be afraid of them.

"He really was. No wonder Mendelson thinks we'll be better than him. If this man ever even  _ thought _ about stopping a ritual, I'll eat a ball of your hair." 

"Hm. Speaking of Mendelson, I don't like him," Ecdurus says, and Gertrude rolls her eyes. 

"Of course you don't like him, you idiot. Man's got the Watcher coming out of his arse." She shrugs. "We'll just have to keep an eye on him, deal with it if he becomes too much trouble."

"I like a girl with a plan," someone says by the door. The voice is tinged with amusement, and when Gertrude turns around she finds it comes from a young woman she's seen in passing at the corridors, clad in a sharp formal outfit with cat eye glasses perched on her button nose, through which her dark, smart eyes look at her with a glint that suggests a joke Gertrude isn't privy to. "That's a big daemon, is he a regular cat, or some sort of lynx?"

Gertrude arches an eyebrow. "I fail to see how that's any of your business. Who are you, anyways?"

"Why, I'm Emma, your new assistant." The woman strides confidently into the office to sit on the desk across from Ecdurus, shoving a bunch of Stacey's stupid notes to the floor, which makes Gertrude's lips twitch a little. "Well, one of them. Eric's out there too, but he's having a bit of a breakdown at the state of the Archives."

A small hummingbird daemon zooms out from her purse and flutters circles around Ecdurus, apparently uncaring that he's exactly the right size for a quick snack.

"Well, he better get used to it." Gertrude crosses her arms over her chest. She's not giving the Eye more power, not even if it makes destroying the others easier for her. "How much do you know?"

The amused gleam in Emma's eyes seems to grow brighter, and her perfectly painted lips curl into a smile. 

"Just enough to get by."

The hummingbird daemon ducks deftly under Ecdurus' swipe, and Gertrude decides that maybe Emma can be useful.

* * *

_ In the end, Emma is useful because Gertrude wants her to be.  _

_ Back then she can still trust, she still  _ **_wants_ ** _ to trust, and clever Emma with her close-lipped smiles and her shiny dark eyes seems like the best candidate, an ally where Gertrude had none. _

_ She likes Eric too of course, it's difficult to  _ **_not_ ** _ like the man, even if his Agape has taken a couple swipes from Ecdurus to the face whenever she gets too overwhelming for their lonely nature.  _

_ Still, Eric is a fool in love, and Gertrude knows that anything she entrusts him with will eventually end up whispered in Mary's ear, which is not a possibility she particularly likes, so she keeps him at arm's length. _

_ At some point before they lose Fiona, Gertrude goes off on the first of many trips. She draws a circle copied from a book with a silk cover and no title, and wakes up strewn on the ground with a thin trail of steam escaping from her parted lips. _

_ She finds Ecdurus collapsed by her side, and resting on his chest, a single, bright red feather. _

_ Emma promises to keep the secret with her life, and it's the one thing she doesn't lie about. _

* * *

"Are you sure you haven't heard of him?" Gertrude asks one more time. She wonders how the tableau would look to an outsider, the two women sitting amiably across a table at a small, cozy cafe, with their daemons looking at each other like they're waiting for a moment to strike.

"I believe I would remember seeing my son's father, Gertrude." Mary takes a sip out of her coffee, and Gertrude feels her hands itch with the need to move, seeing the steaming hot beverage handled so casually over the sleeping infant in Mary's arms. "I haven't seen Eric. At this point I wouldn't be too pleased if I did, to be honest."

Gertrude could Know, she should. Maybe she does already, even though she desperately wants to believe that Eric was right when he said she and Mary just didn't get along with each other because they were far too similar. 

"Well, if you do see him-"

"I'll deal with him." Mary's eyes are sharp with promises, enough coldness in their depths that for a moment Gertrude's certainty wavers. Could she really be telling the truth, and the most dangerous thing in Mary Keay is her scorned heart?

"I- very well."

"Do you have any more questions? Or am I  _ allowed _ to go with my son in peace?" Mary's daemon climbs to his feet to tower over Gertrude's own, his large claws raking against the cafe's polished floors.

Ecdurus, for the first (and last) time in their life, backs off.

* * *

_ She meets the woman that bears a part of her soul just once. _

_ Agnes looks young and beautiful, radiating warmth like a bonfire even in the crisp, cold night.  _

_ "Is that Catena's feather?" She asks, gesturing to the small pendant that usually lays hidden among Ecdurus' fur.  _

_ "I thought it better that souls stayed with souls." Gertrude shrugs.  _

_ "It felt more natural, didn't it?" Agnes says simply. Around her daemon's neck hangs a simple, delicate chain pierced through Ecdurus' missing claw. "I'm sorry about your assistant." _

_ Gertrude lets out an ugly bark of laughter that tastes bitter on her tongue. "Which one?" _

_ Agnes stays silent, a quiet reminder that they're not friends, just two of the Mother's puppets serarching for some agency. _

_ "Gertrude." Ecdurus lifts a large paw to point to the house, and she freezes. _

_ Dolos is such a small daemon that Gertrude didn't even notice when he stopped showing up to zoom around Ecdurus' head like trying to give him a headache. Now he hangs before Emma's door like some sick mockery of a wind-chime, every inch of his little colorful body tangled in thick silver webs, his wings spread at unnatural angles. Minuscule spiders with hair-thin legs crawl out of his empty eye sockets, like the Web took perverse pleasure in making its nest as big an offense to the Watcher as it could. _

_ "Good lord..." Gertrude mutters under her breath as she comes closer. Dolos' head twitches towards her, and a small, gurgling sound comes out of his throat. It's unclear if he can't speak because his thin, delicate beak is held open far wider than it should go, or because the spiders ate his tongue, but Gertrude shudders with the knowledge that he's not only alive, but  _ **_conscious_ ** _. "Let's get this over with already." _

_ "My pleasure," Agnes says, and there's a spark of dark pride in her voice, before she touches the tip of a finger to Emma's door. _

* * *

Gertrude is perhaps a tad underwhelmed, when she meets Jurgen Leitner after years of witnessing the aftermath of his "work".

He's just a man, and a stupid one at that, arrogant enough to think he could contain the entities in a couple of bookshelves, throwing his assistants into the line of fire and watching them burn.

"You're projecting, dear," Ecdurus smirks from where he's perched atop a shelf, like a monarch watching his kingdom. 

"I don't recall asking for your opinion."

"Pity that you're stuck with it, isn't it?"

* * *

_ She finds out about Agnes' death long before Nolan and his clowns come knocking on her door. _

_ Her lungs burn just like they did back at the woods, and Ecdurus lets out a pitiful meow she's never heard from him before. _

_ The feather hanging from his neck dissolves into a mix of ashes and Dust, and they know. _

_ It's a good thing, of course. _

_ Agnes was the strongest of the Desolation's ilk, and though she might not have sought to cause pain and grief herself, Gertrude is very aware the cult fed her regularly. _

_ Her departure from this world can only mean that at least some innocent souls will be spared a fate worse than death at her hearth. _

* * *

"-still don't think it's a good idea," Jurgen says.

Gertrude rolls her eyes, as she prepares to pop Jan Killbride's arm off its socket. "It's good then, that I don't usually take advice from smelly men living in tunnels."

Jurgen's Gloria lets out an indignant squawk, before she begins pecking angrily at Ecdurus. Gertrude chuckles under her breath, when she catches the man subtly sniffing his shirt.

"All I'm saying is you're going to march straight into a ritual,  _ alone _ . That doesn't sound-"

"Why, I didn't realize you were so eager to come with me, Jurg." A pull, a twist, the arm breaks free. It's so much easier to carry a body around in pieces. 

She looks up, when she realizes it's been a couple minutes without the man answering. She finds him staring at her with a puzzled look in his tired eyes, and a quick look to the side reveals Gloria has settled on top of Ecdurus, her wings spread over him like a cape. 

"Jurgen?" Gertrude asks. "Are you going to help me?" 

It takes another eternity, before he slowly shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, Gertrude. I already lost my fight. This one is yours."

She wonders sometimes, what she would've done if he'd responded differently

* * *

_ Gertrude doesn't feel the heat, even standing a couple feet from the burning house.  _

_ "Would you keep a secret for me?" Agnes asks by her side.  _

_ "I think it's the least I could do." Gertrude shrugs. _

_ "I don't think I want to bring forth the Scorched Earth." She turns to look at Gertrude, her eyes gleaming with the light of the fire.  _

_ "...I suppose it is good that you have an anchor, then." _

* * *

"I hate the Slaughter," Ecdurus groans as Gertrude allows herself to slide down the wall until she's sitting on the ground. "They're so  _ messy _ ."

"You have become very delicate, haven't you?" Gertrude pushes a lock of blood-soaked hair from her face. She's not a vain woman, but there's something pleasant about the thick dark red covering the slowly spreading gray. It makes her feel young, and some part of her finds a bit of humor in murder as a midlife crisis. "We'll take a bath at the hotel. I just- need a moment to sit."

"And you talk about becoming delicate," Ecdurus huffs. He allows himself to rest his chin on her lap, because there's no one here to witness it other than the mangled, cooling body on the ground.

"You say it was a mess, but actually think you handled it very cleanly," says a third voice. Gertrude and Ecdurus are on their feet in a second, her mind already whirring to provide an explanation for the murder when Ecdurus catches sight of the owner of the voice.

The owl daemon is perched by a dumpster at the entrance to the alley, backlit by the streetlights in such a way that the only thing they can really see clearly is her big, black eyes gleaming below her plumicorns.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Gertrude says dryly. It wouldn't be the first time she's been 'caught' after dealing with an avatar, but it's always very bothersome. "I was-"

"Forgive Soteria. She's very fond of dramatic entrances," says a man that comes to flank his daemon, apparently without any sense of self-awareness whatsoever. "We're big fans of your work." 

This changes some things. If the man knows who she is, he's either an avatar himself, or he hunts them, like her. Either way, Gertrude keeps a tight grip on the handle of her crowbar.

"And who might you be?" She asks. Ecdurus is already sizing the bird daemon up. She's as big as himself, but they've got experience on their side. They can take them, at least for long enough to escape and plan.

The man strides casually down the alley, stepping over the ex-avatar without sparing them a glance, before he offers Gertrude a large, calloused hand.

"Adelard Dekker. It's an honor to finally meet the infamous Gertrude Robinson"

* * *

_ "Go see my son," Eric's ghost had said. "Make sure he's alright." _

_ After the priceless secret he entrusted her with, it's really the least Gertrude can do. _

_ She meant only to watch from afar (she worries sometimes, that she might be becoming more Archivist than Gertrude), ensure the young man hadn't turned rotten like his mother, and leave. _

_ "...He looks just like Eric," Ecdurus whispers, and Gertrude supposes he's right, asides from the badly dyed hair. His daemon is even a black dog too, though she's sturdier and heavier than Agape was, and her neck is adorned with a ridiculous, heavily spiked leather collar. _

_ Eric's eyes never looked quite so lifeless though, and in the end that's very much what keeps her from just turning away. _

* * *

"I've heard of a Mary Keay." Adelard nods across the table. "A book collector. You know what kind of tomes." 

Gertrude appreciates this about Adelard, he's discreet and knowledgeable, and always willing to share whatever information he's come across.

She doesn't trust him of course (that's how one ends up standing before a blazing house, though she doubts there are any spiders big enough to trap fierce Soteria in their webs), but she... she trusts his motives.

"Nasty piece of work," Soteria clicks her beak dryly, and Ecdurus laughs.

"Yes, we're talking about the same woman then."

* * *

_ "-but there's really no way to go about it." Gerard shrugs. He's going for nonchalant, but Gertrude notices his daemon sticks close to his legs, as far as she can from Ecdurus. "I know how to deal with Leitners, I've been doing it my whole life. But this one is different." _

_ He said as much in the statement Gertrude accidentally compelled from him, a story that paints a much meaner picture of the man she keeps hidden under the Institute. Gertrude had met people affected by Jurgen's books before, but none whose life had been as horribly defined by them as this young man. _

_ "How so?" Gertrude asks. Much to her chagrin, she can feel her resolve solidifying in the presence of this boy with the face of a good man she couldn't keep from a grim end. _

_ "She bound herself perfectly, that book is always guarded by one of them. And I don't recommend going against either her or her daemon." Gerard speaks with the bitterness of experience, and Gertrude's resolve turns to steel. _

_ "That's just fine. I'll deal with it."  _

_ Gerard lets out a bark of dry, strained laughter, and his daemon's hackles raise in a low growl that isn't really aimed at anyone, Gertrude notices. _

_ "You said you'd met her before, but I'm starting to doubt it." _

_ "Oh, I know your mother." Gertrude nods. "I'm just not afraid of her." _

* * *

"It makes sense he latched  on to you, if you ask me," Adelard says with that amused smile that always makes Gertrude want to throw something at him. "What I'm really puzzled by is the fact that you allowed it."

"I did not 'allow' anything, don't be ridiculous." She rolls her eyes, shaking her head. "He's a grown man. If he wants to stick around and help, he knows the risks."

"He's a good one." Soteria puffs her feathers where she's sitting by the end of the table. "He ought to walk away now that he still can, before he ends up like us."

Ecdurus strides across the table to sit by her side, like a pair of guardian gargoyles. Gertrude catches the server giving them a nasty look from the other side of the room; it's fairly rude to allow larger daemons on top of tables or chairs, but if she has a problem with it, she can come and tell them to their face. 

"We made a promise to his father," he says quietly. "And Gerard and Bonitatem are... useful."

"That's a high compliment, coming from you." Adelard chuckles under his breath. Ecdurus grabs one of Soteria's wings between his teeth, but she doesn't look worried at all. "What about your underground guest?"

Gertrude tightens her grip around her cup. "He hasn't been around lately."

"I see."

"Careful where you tread, Adelard."

Adelard lifts a hand in surrender. "In any case, I'm glad you did good by Gerard. He deserves better than the start he got."

Gertrude doesn't respond.

* * *

_ Gerard is... he's easy to care for. _

_ She doesn't know what makes him different from Michael, or if the years and Adelard's ridiculous idealism have simply turned her soft.  _

_ He's guarded and careful, but beneath the scars his mother left on him, he has his father's loving disposition, and Gertrude is very aware that that is where the danger lays. _

* * *

"I must admit I'm disappointed." Elias' poisonous green eyes are almost resplendent with amusement as they follow Ecdurus around the office. It's their old game, and he's confident in the fact that Ecdurus has never been able to find his real daemon before. "I had such high hopes for you, Gertrude."

"You appointed me to stop rituals, didn't you?" Gertrude arches an eyebrow. "I'd say my performance has been stellar."

"In that regard, at least. I sometimes wonder if you aren't Hunt-touched, or Slaughter, you know? With the ferocity you display for your own k-"

"They are not my kind," Gertrude interrupts firmly. Elias rolls his eyes with a little snort, like he finds her amusing. She considers foregoing subtleties and daemons, and just going at his neck. "Get to your point, Elias. Why did you call me here?"

"Well, please don't take this the wrong way, but mostly due to your legendary stubbornness, you're growing old, Gertrude," he says, gesturing at her with a hand. His wrist gleams with a very expensive watch she supposes was Lukas' latest gift. "You're not going to live forever. I would value your input as to your replacement."

"If I have any say in the matter, you won't be here to choose them." There's a flash of blue by the corner of her vision, but Ecdurus' swipe isn't fast enough. "If I have  _ enough _ say in the matter, there won't be a position to fill."

Elias smirks. "No suggestions, got it."

* * *

_ The heart rate monitor beeps monotonously every two seconds or so, the only sound in the hospital room after hours. _

_ Bonitatem is fast asleep by his chest, her paws twitching softly in whatever anesthesia-induced dreams she's having. _

_ They let her stay because she said she was his mother, pouring only enough compulsion in the words to be believed. They assured her with the right drugs, the right treatment, he's bound to get better. He's young and strong, they'd said, like Gertrude didn't know the exact nature of the thing they pulled from his brain.  _

_ Whatever Eye was in him before is gone now, and Adelard's words come back to her from so long ago. _

_ He ought to walk away now that he still can, before he ends up like her.  _

_ Bonitatem lets out a long, low whine, until Ecdurus hops on the bed and lays a large paw on her forehead. _

_ He deserves better than he got. _

_ She hides some money under his pillow, and leaves the hospital without looking back. _

* * *

_ 'I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honor to do it alongside you. _

_ Goodbye, Gertrude. May you find your rest where no shadows are cast, and no eyes may see you slumber.' _

Her eyes run over the last two lines over and over again, and she's  _ angry _ .

She's never been under any false impressions about the world she lives in. How it takes whatever few good people manage to spawn from its rotten depths, and crushes them.

"We knew how it was going to end. We always did," Ecdurus climbs up on her lap. There's no one to see them now, there hasn't been anyone in years. She allows herself to sink a hand in her daemon's coarse fur. "They went how they wanted to go."

"They did." Gertrude nods.

She- she did always scoff at his faith. His unwavering conviction that as much as there was evil in this world, there would be kindness and good in the next one. 

Now, as she clicks his last words away, she finds herself wishing to be mistaken.

If there is something good beyond death, Adelard deserves to go there, even if Gertrude knows she wouldn't be allowed anywhere near its doors, pearly or otherwise.

"We're getting to the end," Ecdurus whispers. "We're almost finished."

"It will never be finished."

* * *

_ 'I'm- what does that even mean? Gertrude, I'm not going anywhere. You can't just call me back like a dog when you-' _

_ She clicks the call to an end, and lets the phone drop from her hand to the gasoline-covered floor. _

_ That was the last thing, just making sure he's doing fine. He can hate her if he wants to; in a few minutes, she won't be in a position to care. _

_ She wonders if Jurgen's little pocket within the tunnels will collapse from the explosion, or if he will outlive her. _

_ How very Beholding-esque of him, to be the last one standing merely by virtue of watching from the sidelines. _

_ She's overcome with a sudden wave of exhaustion, and she merely topples the last gasoline can over with a well-placed kick. _

_ "Gertrude." _

_ Ah. _

_ "You came early," she says before turning around. _

_ Elias is at the threshold, holding a shiny black gun in a hand. "It occurred to me you'd been suspiciously quiet as of late." _

_ "Honestly, I thought you'd assume I was busy with the Dark." _

_ "We both know that is not going to work." Elias steps into the room, and Ecdurus tenses on the desk. If this is their last shot, it better be a good one. "Just like you know  _ **_this_ ** _ isn't going to work." _

_ "Are you sure?" Gertrude arches an eyebrow. "I've found that most of these things don't react too well to sudden fire, not even your patron." _

_ "Huh, I'd forgotten about your unfortunate attachment to the flame." He gives the gun in his hand a thoughtful look, before facing Gertrude again. "You know it will not kill me." _

_ "I was expecting the flames would reach the real you. Or give me enough time to do it myself." _

_ "And we go out together, in a last blaze of glory. How poetic." _

_ "I wasn't planning on dying," Gertrude says, and Ecdurus strikes.  _

_ Magnus' daemon looks laughably fragile in his claws, for one that's caused so much pain. She squirms and stings at Ecdurus' paws, but she's too small, too fragile to break free. It might not be his body, but killing her  _ **_has_ ** _ to be eno- _

_ The gunshots feel like a train slamming against her chest, and Gertrude topples over backwards until she's sliding down the wall, looking at Elias clicking the safety on the gun back on.  _

_ "...Huh," she says quietly. "I thought it would hurt more." _

_ "It was a good attempt. I expected nothing less from you," Elias says. Out the corner of her eye she sees her Ecdurus crumble into a pile of dust, and the wasp daemon shake herself free before taking flight. "Goodbye, now." _

_ In the quiet, foul smelling room, she rests her tired head against the cool stone wall.  _

_ And Gertrude Robinson dies alone. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Harm to daemons: Emma Harvey's daemon is taken by the Web, being eaten alive from the inside.  
> Grey morality: Madame Gertrude Robinson, of course.  
> Arachnophobia: Spiders are described coming out of a living creature's orifices, and eating it from the inside.  
> Manipulation: The Web manipulating Gertrude into binding herself and Agnes together. It is implied that Emma Harvey is manipulating people around her, including Gertrude. Also implied are Gertrude's subtle manipulations of her assistants.  
> Murder/ Character death: Gertrude Robinson, in the same way as in canon. Other notable character deaths are also referenced/discused, but not explored. Random, unnamed Slaughter avatar gets Gertrude'd.  
> Canon-typical violence: Self explanatory  
> Non-consensual daemon touching: Emma Harvey's daemon. The Web's ritual also affected Gertrude and Agnes' daemons in significant ways, giving each a part of the other.  
> Abusive parents: Mary Keay appears in this chapter. First she's seen in a way that is implied could endanger infant Gerry. Later it's implied that Gerry has already gone through so much abuse he simply can't contemplate the idea of breaking free.


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you for sticking with this one guys, hope you enjoyed it!
> 
>  **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Trauma victim trying to overcome a major trigger  
> Avatar characters
> 
> See end notes for more information.

"Behind you," Georgie calls out, and Melanie jumps a little, letting go of the knife almost automatically (she notices, with a hint of relief, that the action doesn't spark any negative feelings in her, no need to grab it again and turn around and  _ hurt _ ) before reaching over to press the pause button in the speaker. "Are you cooking?"

Now that the music and the sounds of her chopping aren't blocking it, she hears Georgie's steps as she comes into the kitchen. 

"We are." Melanie turns around with a smile. "And you have to say it's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted because your  _ amazing _ girlfriend made it."

"She tried to use salt instead of sugar so you better thank me for not having to eat salty french toast," Vis says, then grunts in surprise when Melanie yanks on one of his ears.

"Of course I did you imbecile, I'm  _ blind _ . You don't get praise for doing your job."

"I'm going to eat your strawberries."

"Try it asshole, I make a mean rabbit stew." Melanie flicks his daemon on the forehead. She catches the jingling of Meme's bell ("Georgie, you don't  _ have _ to, I'll just- I'll be careful. He's not the Admiral, he's  _ your soul _ ." "Nonsense. He actually thinks he looks very handsome with it.") and retreats to avoid touching him on accident, because she's well aware of Meme's penchant for draping himself over smaller daemons. 

" _ I  _ appreciate your hard work, Vis." Georgie says by her other side, and when she turns around Melanie gets a strawberry-flavored kiss for her trouble. 

"Don't steal the ingredients," she lectures, but couldn't be any less heat in it. "I just need you to help me fry them, everything else is ready."

Asking for help still bugs her a little at times, but she's getting better at it.

"You can serve the drinks while I do that." Georgie's breath still smells of strawberry and toothpaste, and Melanie holds back the urge to dive in for another taste. "I'm glad you're feeling better today."

And she is. The tissue is healing and so is she, and the scars seldom hurt anymore.

"It's been a rough few months," Melanie says quietly. "It'll get even better, I promise."

"It will," Georgie says, and Melanie's pleased to see she wasn't the only one holding back from a kiss.

* * *

They don't get a house, in the end. 

Gerry insists they'll be just fine ("Gertrude had all these stashes of cash, we can't just let it rot there"), but Martin is far too practical, and they settle for a small flat about an hour away from the city.

It does have a little yard and a studio, because Martin might be practical, but he's also a romantic, and very much in love. 

He and Votem don't spend much time together anymore, but they don't resent the distance. They're not like Peter and Inna, with their dull, broken bond. Votem rides on Jon's shirt pocket or Gerry's shoulder, and Martin is ever so conscious of every single point of contact, of the emotions that spark to life whenever they hold his soul in their hands. 

"What does it feel like?" Gerry asks one evening. They're curled up on the sofa, Jon long since fallen asleep (he tries to do it at times the people whose dreams he'd haunt are less likely to be sleeping, even though his ability to manifest in them has waned) against Gerry's side. Toris is curled on Martin's belly, their legs folded under their body, and their face planted straight into Martin's chest.

"What?" Martin asks, running a finger over one of Toris' ears. "Touching them?"

"No, I'm- I know what  _ that _ feels like." Gerry takes a hand to where Votem is balled up at the dip of his collarbone, and rests a single finger on the mouse daemon's back. Martin feels it as a rush of warmth washing over him and settling on his chest. "When others touch them."

"I like it when you do it. It feels... warm. Safe." He sighs.

"Jon says the same. He let me hold Toris the other day," Gerry says nonchalantly. Martin, who has traced a finger over the claw marks on Gerry's left forearm, gets the feeling that it was a lot less casual than he's making it sound. 

Gerry's eyes drift to his own daemon. Boni's curled a few feet away from them, emitting the soft growl she does whenever Gerry feels uncomfortable or nervous.

"...We don't  _ have _ to touch her, you know?" Martin says carefully, resenting the fact that he can't really sit up without jostling Toris -and Jon- awake. "Most people don't."

"I guess so," Gerry shrugs. "I just. I think it'd be nice."

Martin knows there's something else in the way Boni keeps growling even as she wags her tail, but he doesn't say anything. 

They're all broken in their own ways, getting better at their own pace.

* * *

"-know the new boss, just up and fired me for no reason, the prick."

"Just like that?" Jon asks. The nervous little grin in his face makes Daisy want to walk around the table and pick him up in a hug.

"Just like that," Basira says at her side. Eadala poofs up proudly on her shoulder, giving him the appearance of a rather smug feather duster, and Daisy has to take a moment to gather her wits about her, when she's suddenly struck by the realization of how much her life has changed, how much it's going to change from now on. 

"I didn't know he could do that," Jon says; his burnt hand clenches in Toris' fur, and Daisy understands. If Basira is free, then Martin could be, too.

"Neither did I, and I think he didn't know either, but I signed my resignation and I'm not dying, so..." Basira shrugs. "I'm not particularly keen on questioning it, either."

"And where will you go?"

"I have- it's not much, but I have a little house up north," Daisy says. "We're thinking of rebuilding it, and then... we don't know."

The floorboards are soaked through with the blood of three vampires and a woman she now knows was an avatar of the Dark, with their mare daemon that put up more than a decent fight against Po, and whose scruffy mane did a wonderful job of hiding the smooth surface where their eyes should've been. It has seeped into the earth just like the memory of the things she did have seeped into her soul, but maybe with some hard work, they can start again and build something new.

Together.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Boni whispers after their second failed attempt. 

Gerry holds her tighter against his chest, leaning back against the bathtub's edge with a sigh.

"It's not your fault," he says, resting his chin on the crown of her head.

"I wanted it too. I really did," she whines. She would've let it happen too, if Martin and Jon hadn't retreated first when they realized how tense she was under the threat of their gentle hands. "I know they aren't her. I know-"

"Boni." Gerry squeezes his daemon, just like he used to do when they were six and afraid and hurting. " _ It's not our fault _ ."

Saying it feels not like breaking a curse, but cracking the surface to let some of the rot out.

It was  _ never _ their fault.

"Hey." Votem's voice is soft when he speaks out by the bathroom's entrance. "I'll leave you two alone. We just wanted to ask if you needed anything."

When he looks over at him, Gerry snorts when he sees one of Toris' paws sticking in from under the door, the gap between it and the floor just narrow enough that they can't squeeze through as well.

"We'll be fine," Gerry says. That much is true. They've made a life here that doesn't fit in two suitcases, and that feels just as important as any soul-touching that may or may not occur. "Thank you."

Votem climbs up Boni's back to nibble at her ear lovingly, before he presses his little nose against Gerry's chin in a gesture that transmits a lot more than simple contact.

"I love you," the daemon,  _ Martin's soul _ says. "I'm going to go back before Toris hurts themself trying to get through."

Gerry laughs, and even Boni gives a weak chuckle at the offended hiss that comes from behind the door.

They fall into an easy silence, just letting the hours go by, grounding themselves in the knowledge that they are safe, that for once in their lives, there's a place to come back to when they're tired of fighting, where they can break down and not be seen as weak.

"Do you remember that time at the motel, when I had the bone?" Boni asks long after light has stopped filtering through the windows.

"I thought you were snacking on a Flesh avatar, Boni, of course I remember." Gerry rolls his eyes fondly. "What about it?"

Boni shifts a little against his chest, hooking her muzzle over his shoulder.

"It wasn't Ecdurus that gave it to me," she whispers. Then, very quietly after a long, tense moment. "I miss them."

Gerry closes his eyes. He wonders for a moment, whether or not Gertrude would have known how to live in peace. 

"Me too, sometimes."

* * *

"So not only do you kill the man, you also deface his sanctuary." As always, there's a brief hint of confusion in his eyes when he looks up at her, before he blinks and the well-loved smile blooms across his lips. "You really don't do anything by halves, Director Stoker."

"I have no idea what you mean," Tim leans back on his chair with a grin. "I bet Elias would have  _ loved _ a pinball machine in his office."

His calm, smooth demeanor is greatly undermined by Agni's tail beating up a frantic rhythm against the side of the desk, which only intensifies when Calliope flutters over to land on her nose.

"You know what? Maybe you're right," Sasha smiles back, coming around the desk to sit down at the corner, on the side he can hear her better at. "It's probably one of those memories I haven't gotten back, I'm sure he was a legendary pinball player."

"Definitely. It'll come back to you, you'll see." Tim, very predictably, shuts up the moment she leans over to place a kiss on his lips, and his smile when they part is a whole other animal, tender and soft and brimming with devotion, like it is Sasha and not the Eye who he's tied to for eternity (maybe it is).

"Let's go for a walk," she says, pressing another, softer kiss to his forehead. 

"Not that I'm refusing, but don't you have work to do?"

"What?" Sasha brings a hand to her chest in mock-surprise. "You mean the Head Archivist is actually supposed to  _ do _ things?"

"I'm sorry you have to find out like this, but 'go be a sap with your boyfriends and occasionally read storybooks to the kids at the community library' isn't actually the job description, no matter what your counterpart would have you believe." He comes to his feet between her legs, and she drapes her arms over his shoulders and brings him down to rest their foreheads together, before he gives in. "Let's go for a walk."

This new head of the Institute doesn't care about rituals, either his or otherwise, and the Eye is content to merely watch and learn and  _ learn _ , like her. The position has brought her memories back little by little (her powers grow as Jon's wane, the Eye trying to split its power evenly between the two), the eyelets on Calliope's wings sometimes turn around to look at the statement givers as they write down their encounters for her to feed on later.

None of this matters however, she decides as she walks down the riverside, watching Agni jump and chase after Calliope like two teenagers in love.

She remembers enough to know who she is, and where she's going, and the rest?

She'll figure out along the way.

* * *

In the end, it's not the grand event Gerry was expecting, not a life changer or a sudden epiphany that he's now 'cured' and 'whole'. 

Jon and Martin are sitting on the sofa, their gazes fixed on the documentary Jon chose for the night, as Gerry brings the drinks over from the kitchen and takes a seat on the spot they've left for him.

Martin's hand moves to slip under his hair immediately, draping itself over his nape in a soft, absentminded caress. When Toris comes over to curl on Gerry's lap he rests his coffee mug on top of their belly, because he knows they enjoy the warmth. Out of the corner of his eye he catches Jon's entire posture relaxing as he sags against Martin, and he smiles when he sees Votem take the opportunity to jump from his human's head down onto Jon's.

This is home, wherever these four are.

He's not really focused on the documentary, distracting himself instead with squeezing Toris' toes and watching Jon jump, when it hits him.

Martin described it as 'warm and safe', which is a  _ massive _ understatement, in Gerry's opinion, to the feeling he's experiencing. He sucks in a shaky breath, looking over at where Boni's leaning her flank against Martin and Jon's tangled legs, her eyes clenched shut like she's expecting a cruel hand reaching over to twist her ears.

Jon and Martin don't move, don't even look down at her, though Martin's hand on Gerry's neck stills, and he gives him a questioning, worried look.

Gerry exhales, before giving him a slow nod and relaxing his grip on Toris, whose rough tongue runs over the back of his hand over and over again, grounding him with that slightest bit of pain to counter the onslaught of pleasure, of genuine and overwhelming care pouring in through his bond with Boni.

And that's that.

Boni never becomes as casual with the touches as Votem and Toris, but it doesn't bother Gerry anymore.

It feels important somehow, that this happened on their terms. That they know they can heal at their own pace, because here they are safe, and they are loved, ugly scars and all.

* * *

The cottage is small, practically built by hand by two people who didn't have much experience on what they were doing but knew perfectly well that a house is a home not because of how tall the walls are, but because of what they protect. The weathervane fastened to the cottage's roof depicts two birds with their wingtips touching mid-flight, not too functional as anything but a sign to mark their nest.

"Thank you, Helen." Jon steps out onto solid ground a lot more gracefully than the other two for once; there's something to be said about being able to See the inside of the Distortion even if his powers have diminished to stabilize with Sasha's.

"My pleasure. Literally." Helen grins and closes her door behind them. Her daemon looks more like a long-legged hyena than a maned wolf today, and Jon averts his eyes quickly enough to avoid the headache when she squeezes herself through the keyhole.

"Not my favorite way of travelling by far," Gerry groans. 

"Well... it's either two hours of distortion or eleven hours of a cramped bus. I'd rather take my chances with the first one." Martin clings to the little stone fence, taking deep, long breaths to stave off the nausea.

"I think you're overreacting," Toris says teasingly, their eyes still glowing green from finding the way through the corridors. "It's just a little- AH!" 

Jon flinches, when his daemon is knocked over and tumbles a few feet away in a tangle of paws and brown and white fur.

"We were wondering when you'd get here, Helen kept you a lot longer than the others," Georgie drapes herself over Jon's back to plant a kiss on his cheek. "I think she didn't take too kindly to not being able to feed from me."

"I don't think she got too much out of us either." Sasha comes out next, her arm wrapped around Tim's waist. "So basically Melanie, Gerry and Martin paid for our trip."

"You're welcome." Gerry rolls his eyes, though there's no fire to the complaints anymore now that Martin is leaning on him instead, and Boni goes to dive into the fray as well.

"Hey, Tim," Martin greets, raising his voice a little, and Tim lifts his gaze from where he's quietly looking at Agni draped over Toris. The bright green eyes are still a little uncanny on his face, Jon thinks, but all of them are different now. "How's the Institute?"

"Barely hanging on, we had to let go of our best employee two months ago, it was a terrible blow." Tim gives a long, overly dramatic sigh. "The man left to open a  _ teahouse _ with his boyfriend."

"You know millennials, no commitment whatsoever," Martin laughs. "Besides, you still got your head Archivists."

"Those two? Their main job skill is getting into trouble." Tim rolls his eyes. Calliope comes to rest on his hair, and his teasing smile softens. He lays a hand on Jon's shoulder, squeezing quickly once before letting go. "I pity whoever has to deal with them, they must be saints."

"They really are," Jon mutters quietly, smiling when Votem nuzzles his cheek before he climbs down to join in with the larger daemons. "How-"

"Daisy says if you don't come in already, she's coming out to drag you all in," Melanie calls out. The hand not wrapped around the wrought iron gate's edge is stretched out wide to feel for obstacles, and Vis sticks closer to her than he used to before, ready to warn about any tripping hazard.

"Let's not keep the hosts waiting, then." Georgie grins as Meme untangles from the daemon pile to go nuzzle Vis, the bell around his neck ringing loudly with each step. 

"Let's, I'm starving." Tim waits for Agni to climb to her feet as well, and then he allows Sasha to pull him back. 

"Spooky hunger, or regular hunger?" Gerry asks as he bends down to pick up Votem, before he and Martin follow.

"That's  _ my _ joke, Delano. You can't just  _ steal my joke _ ."

"Sod off, you don't have a monopoly on the word." Gerry shoves softly at Tim's shoulder, turning around when he realizes Martin isn't moving. 

Martin, whose gaze is currently fixed on Jon and Toris, his lips curled in a little smile, equal parts puzzled and amused. "Jon? Aren't you coming?"

"I- yes. Yes, I am." Jon steps forward to grab Martin's offered hand, to allow Gerry to tuck him against his side, and let Boni push her wet, cold nose against his knuckles, as Toris climbs their way up to drape themself across Martin's shoulders.

Jon remembers the bad things, the pain. He always has, and there's plenty of it to go around.

The road that brought them here is covered in footsteps made of tears and blood and golden dust, but there's something fitting about Jon's journey starting with a door, and ending just the same. 

There is no way to predict what comes after, not even with all of the Watcher's powers. 

_ He can't wait to find out. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs for this chapter include:**  
>  Trauma victim trying to overcome a major trigger: Gerry voluntarily tries to get rid of his trauma-induced fear of having his daemon touched. This is framed as a personal choice, relapses are not framed as inherently negative. Gerry and Boni acknowledge that their mother's abuse was her fault only. In the end Gerry and Boni do achieve their goal, though this is not treated as them being "cured" or "made whole".  
> Avatar characters: Tim has become the new head of the Institute after killing Jonah Magnus. Sasha has been appointed as Head Archivist, which causes her and Jon to share powers.


End file.
